Lijani Boerdery is a large vegetable farm and bottling factory located in Tarlton in northern Gauteng, with customers including most of the major supermarket chains in South Africa, including Pick n Pay and Shoprite Checkers.
The farm's business was thriving, but it had a unique challenge - when orders and invoices needed to be sent from the offices at the main farm to the bottling and canning factory, they had to be printed and hand-delivered by tractor, an inefficient process when you consider that the farm spans more than four kilometres across.
The Internet system in the office was running off a 3G connection, which was very slow as the signal was intermittent. A networking system to link computers from the offices at the farm to the factory was the solution, but a cable system was not possible to lay as the fields are regularly ploughed.
Furthermore, the layout of the farm presented a challenge, as the farmhouse is situated on a hill in the middle of the property, with the factory on one side and the farm on the other. Lijani Boerdery called on IT providers IT Square to deliver the solution, a network of AirLive AirMax5 wireless outdoor CPE routers supplied by Nology Distribution.
"The AirLive AirMax 5 is the ideal solution for this type of outdoor scenario," says Greg Solz, MD at Nology Distribution. "It features a weatherproof casing that is UV resistant and integrated antenna and coverage range of up to three kilometres. Combined with this, a variety of operation modes are available allowing users to access networks from wireless devices, bridge networks and provide others with network access, all in one powerful unit."
As a trusted IT supplier working with Lijani Boerdery for more than a decade, IT Square was the natural choice when it came to solving the farm's networking challenges. Having met with and discussed the needs of Lijani Boerdery, IT Square opted to lay out three contact points: one at the farm for the offices; one at the factory so that orders could be delivered in good time; and one at the farmhouse on the hill to act as a bridge for the connection over the hill to both sides of the farm, using the AirMax5 products.
"The area itself presented challenges in that there is a lot of lightning, so cable was not an ideal solution. In addition, the layout of the land with the hill in the middle and its sheer size meant that most wireless routers would not be up to the job," says Brandon Humphreys, Technical Manager at IT Square. "The AirLive AirMax5 units are relatively new products on the market and we used Lijani Boerdery as an ideal test site for them. The products were easy to configure, the implementation itself presented no challenges, and we have been impressed by the stability and reliability of the units.
"The team from Nology was always on hand to answer any queries we had about the products and assist us with troubleshooting. They played an important supportive role during the project," he adds.
Lijani Boerdery has seen several tangible business benefits from the implementation of the new network. Productivity at the factory has been increased as invoices and orders can now be delivered directly to the printers in real-time, saving the arduous journey by tractor, and thanks to a 3G booster aerial installed by IT Square, the signal strength is far more stable, making connectivity speeds higher and dramatically improving the time taken to do the bi-weekly payments. IP cameras in the factory have also been linked into the network for better security, and with the improved 3G connectivity, the network can now be accessed remotely, making maintenance a far simpler task in this remote location.
"A total of 11 IP cameras now run on the network, and I can monitor these from the computers in my house, resulting in a marked increase in productivity as well as a decrease in petty crime in the factory, while providing an overall benefit of improved security around the entire farm," says Jan Mokken from Lijani Boerdery. "We are most impressed with the improvements that the solution has delivered all-round."
"While the landscape itself and the layout of the farm may have presented challenges, the implementation of the network ran very smoothly and with no hitches. This project clearly shows how networking technology can be used to improve business even in sectors that are not considered IT-based, such as farming," Solz concludes.
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