THE ZENATEK TRACKING SYSTEM

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Our experience began in 90’s when we use to ship high numbers of containers with food for international projects every month to remote and challenging operative theatres /areas. Carrying out the contracts, too often the traces of some containers were lost, and we frequently received tardy communications about break-ins, missed transshipments and temperature changes with consequent interruptions in the cold chain. From the need/obligation to supply food in compliance with contracts in terms of punctuality in delivery and perfect conditions during the transport, we looked for a tracking service that didn't exist yet at the time, so we decided to create a Company having as core business the supply of trucking services and, the rest is history.

during the pandemic we took advantage of the forced reduction of our presence at international fairs to redesign the new generation of telematic devices that will be launched shortly: we do not want to anticipate anything, but we are talking about a technology that is even more performing than the current one and still more competitive commercially.

We have also improved our internal procedures, so that we can dispatch the orders our customers place, within 4 hours of receipt, and we have also reviewed the agreements with our couriers for the delivery of the devices ordered within 3 (or less) working days.

There are companies that collect statistics of this kind of system, and they list a certain type of devices that perform this service. I must say that most of the sales’ number declared by these companies are fake numbers boosted by sales imagination, the only one that are sold on large quantities are those used by the cooling/refrigerated engine placed in reefers containers, supplied with refrigerated engine (ie. Daiking, Thermoking & etc.) which are powered by the same engine and not simply by the batteries as our system.

Between those listed there are those that are operating with satellites. The cost to operate with satellite, brings the cost of the device too high, to be supported by a client which uses a transport container that might cost around 2000 US $ per trip. Besides this, to operate from the container to connect directly to the satellites, it is necessary to have an opening from the same and this is not allowed by the container owner.

There are also carriers that have embedded a similar system into their container, but due to the enormous cost of investment they have supported, in reality they have difficulty to sell the service separately from the transport cost they need to charge. So, the number of the system sold/installed is in reality not in use.

Let’s say that the two components of our service, namely the tracking device and the web application where the results of the tracking are shown, are realised with top quality components and technologies. Just for give you an example, our tracking device is self-powered and the battery that equip the device is so powerful that we can envisage up to seven years of functioning before the battery run out, again the humidity and temperature sensors are so accurate and quick in recording the variations of parameters that also the our demanding clients were positively surprise about it.

Some forwarders attach to the container’s doors a simple “RFID tag” (quite an unexpensive method) to understand if the doors have been violated, but this may be known on arrival at destination with a scanner and not being informed straight away that the pilferage or violation had occurred, as with our system.

The Web application is so easy and user friendly that usually the users don’t need to be trained for manage it. Above all, I want to underline that our device is disposable, means it don’t need to be retrieve at the end of the monitored trip avoiding a reverse logistics and give, in this way, the opportunity to our client to save resources.

In my opinion, the future of the tracking systems can be easily summarized in three words: connection, connection, connection. At the moment the tracking industry offers the service only if the tracking devices are operating in zones where there is available the coverage of a transmission technology (GPRS, Satellite, others) is available, but we must keep in mind that at today’s date there are still spots on the Earth surface where is not possible to receive the data because of the lack of transmission services. The market is ready to warmly welcome tracking services that will provide real time messages and warnings wherever triggered but, to ensure that this type of service can be provided, it is necessary to have full coverage of data transmission services.

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