Muristek
A company established by Castlegregory man Mike Fitzgerald has developed a product that could revolutionise the management of shipping containers in transit and make worldwide freight transport more efficient and environmentally friendly. Mike’s company, Net Feasa, has devised a system that uses communications technology and artificial intelligence to pinpoint the exact location of a shipping container at any time during its journey over land, sea or air. The efficiencies gained by knowing exactly where a container is at a given time will allow shipping companies to reduce the number of containers they use and so help them reduce costs and reduce their carbon footprint, according to Mike. The IoTPASS device, which has been developed in collaboration with Cork based Tyndall National Institute, is designed to be affordable and to last the lifetime of a shipping container, removing the need to replace batteries or other components. Added to this, global communications company Vodafone has teamed up to supply sim cards which will connect the device to the Internet, allowing it to communicate information about a container in transit. Present tracking systems do not give a complete picture of the whereabouts of non-refrigerated containers. Even though tracking is done, it can be labour intensive and relies on information being passed on from scanners at ports or airports along the container’s route. However, the system being brought to market by Net Feasa will be much more effective in communicating a container’s location and other crucial information to the owners. Combined with this, Net Feasa has an already widely used data management system called EvenKeel, which will provide reports and analysis of the data gathered from the IoT device attached to a shipping container. The innovative device has gone through exhaustive testing to ensure it can function in the extreme environments to which shipping containers are exposed, such as high levels of salt, grease, dirt, and equator to arctic temperatures. One of the test locations was Dutch Harbour in Alaska, home port of ‘The Deadliest Catch’ TV series. A critical part of Net Feasa’s new technology is that it is maintenance free. Mike said that while tracking devices for refrigerated containers are already on the market, these are powered by batteries that must be changed periodically. To avoid the labour-intensive task of locating a specific container and organising someone to change the battery, Net Feasa’s IoTPASS harvests solar power and energy from the movement of the container so that it can keep on running without interruption. Both Net Feasa and the Tyndall National Institute are participants in the EU Energy ECS project, an extensive three-year project to develop smart and secure energy solutions for future mobility and green energy transition. The project has a total of 30 partners from eight European countries and an overall budget of €33 million. Net Feasa, with its HQ in Dingle and offices in California is a wireless service provider founded in 2015. The company is focused on providing IoT data connectivity, connectivity management, analytics and machine learning for smart containers (intermodal transport containers). Mike Fitzgerald has 30 years of experience in software and wireless networking companies. After 10 years with Ericsson, he went on to be a vice president of two NASDAQ-quoted companies, ADC Telecommunications and interWAVE Communications. Between 1999 and 2019 he was a founding investor or board member of a number of companies including Net Feasa, Altobridge, NewBay, AMCS Group, Mianach (VC) and Microcellular Systems Ltd. Mike graduated from University College Cork in 1988 and Stanford University Graduate School of Business in 2008. In 2009, he was named Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year (Emerging category) and a Technology Pioneer at the World Economic Forum in 2012.
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