George Ireland

George Ireland Livestock is an agricultural supplier based near the village of Hazelrigg to the north of Newcastle-Upon-Time. Like many agricultural businesses, the Ireland family enterprise operates over extensive tracts of countryside covering many hectares.

Farm vehicles roam many miles on a daily basis performing a wide variety of tasks. This has always made coordinating work across the entirety of the farm tricky. Typically, foremen have to wait for workers to complete one task and return to the farm yard before handing out new instructions, often meaning a lot of time gets wasted in between.

The client wanted to improve efficiency across all farm operations by finding an effective way to keep workers in touch wherever they happened to be. That way, new tasks could be allocated throughout the day without people having to travel all the way back to the main yard, saving time and fuel costs.

The problem was finding a solution suitable both for the rough and tumble of farm work and that would work across such a large area. Two way radios are built for durability and reliability in tough conditions, including outdoor use in all weather conditions.

But signal range is limited. Mobile phones, on the other hand, offer the coverage but are comparatively flimsy and prone to damage. Plus they are not the easiest things to use when you have your hands full with another task.

Thanks to recent innovations, Brentwood Communications was able to offer the client a solution that combines the best of industrial-class radio and mobile technology.

IDARO is a new concept that redefines what is possible with on-site communications for agriculture. By making robust push-to-talk handsets compatible with cellular networks, agricultural businesses get the best of both worlds – convenient, easy to use, reliable comms devices that provide universal connectivity wherever users happen to be.

For George Ireland Livestock, we supplied a combination of Telo M5 vehicle mobile radios and TE390 handheld radios, all programmed with IDARO software and fitted with a SIM card to connect them to a cellular network. The Telo TE390 is a compact, modern, rugged handheld device with ultra-simple push-to-talk controls and a durable build for use in all environments.

We also supplied dispatcher software so that all vehicles could be tracked from the site office using GPS, allowing smarter decisions to be made about which teams to allocate to different jobs.