Ever since it opened for business three years ago, Australian cotton gin operator Southern Cotton has employed radio frequency identification to track the cotton it receives, stores and processes, and has shared that information with growers to make the ginning process and delivery to customers more efficient and error-free. Southern Cotton is now expanding the solution to enable its employees, as well as growers, to access the collected RFID data via an app on their smartphone or tablet.
Southern Cotton was founded in 2011 by a group of New South Wales cotton farmers in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. The cotton industry was growing in the area, and the farmers saw a need for a local gin that could provide efficient services for growers, who had been transporting their cotton to the nearest gin some 400 kilometers (250 miles) away.
