SMART, the modern solution to an age old problem.

Rodents cause significant damage to businesses worldwide

They damage and contaminate food stores, structures, infrastructure and more. Rodents are voracious and will eat anything available to them. Even the most well protected food stores can be vulnerable to rodents, with their exceptionally keen sense of smell. They can chew through anything, including wood, plastic, electrical cords and concrete. There’s even evidence of rats chewing through lead plates! It means that unless your food stores and rodent vulnerable assets are in a sealed steel box, you are likely to find some level of rodent activity in your business. Don’t worry though, you’re not alone. Rats cause hundreds of millions of dollars of damage the world over.

SMART – A sophisticated approach to combating rodents

Flick, with Anticimex, is implementing a new technology called SMART, to help combat rodents. It’s implementation is changing reshaping how we do pest control. Involved in the roll out is Jeff Alexander, a SMART guru and head of sales at Flick. We asked him what SMART was and what makes it so special.

“It’s a new technology around rodents and it’s unique to Anticimex (parent company to Flick), providing us real time activity reports on rodents on sites. We have monitoring devices along with catch devices. So, with any particular site we can monitor a site to see what activity there is including number of catches and when they occur. It’s WIFI operated, and all the information then comes back to us to a data hub which we can then report to the clients on” says Jeff.

A Flick SMART Multicatch connected via WiFi

Connected and continuous monitoring

Connecting to the WiFi, the SMART system is able to provide instantaneous feedback on the catch and  monitoring systems. It transmits this data to the SMART App which gives clients real time reporting on the progress of their Pest control solutions.  This is a significant improvement on traditional monitoring and bait systems, as Jeff explains:

“Traditional stations are baited and the only way we can judge activity is going back to site if they’re on a monthly or three monthly cycle and saying, yes a rodents eaten some bait, but we don’t how many, we don’t know whether we’ve killed any, we don’t know where they’ve gone to die.“

Traditional Bait stations require regular manual checking to be effective

Taking out the Guess Work

Monitoring using traditional methods is in part a guessing game, trying to judge how many rodents may have come past a certain area or eaten the bait based on the remaining bait in the catch or monitoring station. Though with training and knowledge a skilled technician can make an educated guess, there is no definitive way to tell the exact level of interaction the rodent population is having with detection and catch systems.

The lack of conclusive evidence makes it extremely hard to establish the precise scope of a rodent problem. It’s even harder to then provide tailored solutions using data that’s incomplete and possibly months old. What’s needed is clearer and more timely data on the problem. The SMART system is providing that. Constant monitoring provides constant stream of accurate data as soon as it happens.

Infestations happen quickly, but removing them takes time and money.

As Jeff tells us “The beauty of the monitoring side of the system is that we can look at a particular site and say, there’s increased activity here, we need to do something about it, before it becomes a real issue, and that’s something we’ve never had before.”

Infestations can be responded to in real time with a much more targeted approach. This is made possible in large to the development of new technology called the SMART Eye.

The SMART Eye, a technological way of looking for rodents

“The SMART Eye is used for monitoring and can be used in different ways. The installations in Australia, a large proportion of them, are smart eyes being placed on traditional rodent stations. With SMART, with the eyes on top our traditional stations, anything that comes into that box, we get an alert that tells you’ve had a rodent in.” Says Jeff.

The SMART Eye is the working horse of the SMART system. It’s what provides the monitoring information and is an adaptable and versatile piece of equipment. It can be used in conjunction with our Multi catch systems and with traditional catch systems.

The SMART Eye also works as a stand-alone monitoring device, allowing access to areas that weren’t available before.

“That’s the beauty of the eye, and it can also be used by itself for monitoring. It doesn’t have to be on a rodent station, it can be on cable trays. So, when rodents are running cable trays etc in factories, we can have an EYE up there to determine ‘yes we do have rodents up there we need to do something about it.’ But without that eye, we would of never have known.”

The SMART Eye can be deployed in previously un-monitored places such as cable runs and roof beams.

Non-Toxic Multi-Catch Systems

Data on the problem is helpful, but raw data doesn’t deter rodents. There needs to be action on the data to provide solutions to rodent problems. This is where the Multi Catch system comes in. Our Multi-catch systems can kill and hold up to 6 rodents per station. The best part, the system doesn’t use Rodenticides, so the whole system is non-toxic. A big plus, especially for the clients who can’t use toxic baits and poisons, like those in the food industry,

Jeff explains: “A lot of food-based industries, they have a requirement internally through their auditing process, they have to check stations on daily basis. They can’t have bait number one, so what they tend to do is have monitoring stations, so they can then determine if they have an issue or not. And those monitoring stations, they use attractants that rodents will eat, so it’s like going back to the baited stations, where rodents might nibble on it, but how much activity, it might be one big rodent come in and eat the whole lot, you just don’t know.”

Notifications, in real time

Once the Multi-catch system detects it’s full, it notifies the managing technician, who comes and replaces it quickly and efficiently. Instead of a trap being idle for days or potentially months whilst it waits for an inspection to reset it, a SMART system is back in action in potentially a matter of hours.

SMART is quickly being integrated by businesses across Australia. Many businesses have started by using SMART to supplement traditional rodent management, to provide them with real time data on the levels of pest interactions within their businesses, but the use of this technology is growing.

“With SMART, on probably 80% of the installations that we’ve done in Australia, it’s often in combination with traditional rodent control and what we find is people get SMART in to supplement a rodent issue, SMART gradually gets expanded on because they like it so much. it’s a system that’s really effective.” Says Jeff.

SMART is available Australia wide, and can be deployed quickly to help effectively manage Rodents in your business. Call us on 1300 270 019 to talk about how SMART can be implemented into your business to reduce the damage of rodents on your business.