Proudly family owned and operated, Rakaia Island is a large farming operation in Canterbury comprising six dairy farms and one dry stock farm, with 9000 happy cows. Rakaia Island has rich family values, so while they are classed as a corporate, there is very much a warm family feel that emulates through the business. Rakaia Island operates with advanced technology, from fitting Allflex collars on their cattle to manage their health individually, to moisture probes in the soil to avoid an excess of irrigated water. Taking advantage of advancing innovation is paramount to Rakaia Island’s operation in striving towards efficiency, sustainability and health & safety – enter Fleetpin! Rakaia Island and Fleetpin have been partnered for over a year, and assist with monitoring 65 of their high value assets, these being primarily motorbikes. One of Rakaia Island’s top priorities is looking after their employees, “we want all of our team to be home safe every night”, says Cherie Kitney, Rakaia Island’s Health & Safety and Wellbeing Coordinator. A great measure supporting this is Fleetpin’s SOS buttons that Rakaia Island have implemented. When pressed, an SOS alert is triggered where a notification is sent to a designated receiver. Should their employee be faced with an emergency, they are able to immediately alert for help, with their location determined and shared by Fleetpin. This system plays an integral role in Rakaia Island’s Health & Safety measures. Being able to track down their bikes has already proven to be extremely beneficial, an example of this being when one of their employee’s got stuck under their motorbike and their phone had died, when the employee hadn’t been heard from and began to cause concern, they were easily tracked down using Fleetpin, sending help their way. Fleetpin’s driver behaviour reporting is also heavily utilised by Rakaia Island, in order to maintain the preventative safety of their drivers and the wear of their farm vehicles. The driver behaviour reporting system means that employees are more cautious of their driving behaviour, and management can check in to ensure that staff are making their way around the farms safely. Rakaia Island also utilises Fleetpin from an administrative point of view. For instance, the detailed reports generated within Fleetpin are shown to Rakaia Island’s board of directors, due to its efficient way of presenting useful data and reports. Another report frequently utilised at Rakaia Island is Fleetpin’s Compliance report, which assists with managing service reminders including RUC, WoF, Rego – these tasks can be strenuous when dealing with such large fleets and can be costly when overlooked. Something Cherie appreciates about Fleetpin is how user-friendly it is, “I’m a farmer through and through… and very new to technology”, she says, finding some new technology too complex. After some familiarisation, Cherie finds Fleetpin straightforward and easy to use. Rakaia Island started with implementing Fleetpin with just a portion of their fleet, but have now rolled it out to all of their farm vehicles, keeping continuity across the whole business. Their employees are all on board with GPS fleet tracking, being that it is a major health and safety benefit. Fleetpin is proud to support Rakaia Island with a system and technology extremely beneficial to Rakaia Island and the ethos of their team returning home safely each day.
