Like most industries, pest control companies are under growing pressure from corporate clients – and consumers – to adopt sustainable solutions, from minimising chemicals in baits to using traps that kill instantly and humanely.
John Radman, GM of commercial sales at Australian pest control company Flick Anticimex, says corporate clients, especially larger ones, are always searching for innovative ways to meet their ESG targets and demonstrate their sustainability credentials to their customers.
Sustainability is a key driver in Flick’s development of digital pest control solutions which are becoming increasingly sought after in the market.
“Not only is that a better solution to control the pests, but it also ticks the boxes on the sustainability and environmental concerns that clients may have versus traditional methods. Sustainability is becoming more and more a criterion that clients are looking for,” says Radman.
Flick was founded in Australia in 1918 and was bought by Swedish multinational pest control company Anticimex in 2013. Today, Flick Anticimex operates about 60 branches in Australia and New Zealand, with a team of some 1600 people servicing more than 58,000 commercial sites and 225,000 residences. Flick’s Smart Solution service monitors sites for pest activity – and the devices deployed to catch them – all on a 24-seven basis.
“The idea of the digital aspect is that we can pretty much be the eyes of the business every hour of every day of the year. That’s a good thing because pest control has traditionally operated through a fixed service regime. A customer might need to have a location serviced for rodents or cockroaches for example, on a monthly or quarterly basis, so a technician will go to the site, check the bait stations in place, re-bait them if necessary and then leave. Or they might undertake a cockroach treatment.”
The problem with that approach is that there may be pest activity as early as the next day, but a company delivering on a service contract won’t be aware of that new activity until the next service, so you’ve got a lag of whatever that service frequency is: it might be one month or three months.
“The next time the technician goes to a site to re-bait a station, they will open the bait box, see there’s no bait left, so they will know there must be rodents around. Traditionally, we would just add more bait and hope the rodent has eaten enough and gone away and died. But rodents are becoming more tolerant to poisons and then there is the question of how many rodents have eaten that bait. How often do they eat it? What time of day? Do they eat it? Do they die? We don’t know.”
While such a traditional method of pest control leaves a lot of unanswered questions, the new-generation digital method from Flick uses sensors to monitor activity. Non-toxic bait – like scraps of food on the premises that the rodents like – chicken, anyone? – can be used to lure the rodent into a humane trap that kills them instantly, usually by electric shock, avoiding the use of poisons that might cause the rodent a slow, painful death.
“If there is a spike in activity we can react almost immediately. We will go to the site, investigate the issue and treat it there and then, or for a major infestation, recommend a solution.
“Traditionally we would have had to wait up to three months to know about a problem, by which time a lot of damage could have been done. They could have damaged infrastructure, created more nests, or got into pallets of product stored in a warehouse, more or less getting into the supply chain,” he continues.
“We know that with digital if you identify the problem as soon as it arises it could save the client a lot of money and protect their reputation.”
Another aspect is the reporting. With round-the-clock monitoring, Flick’s team can identify the time of day pests are causing trouble. “Generally we’re seeing trends with different clients like during the day when there’s people around working there’s not much activity, but as soon as everyone goes home – or late at night, early in the morning – that’s when a lot of activity is occurring. If we have enough devices in place, we can see patterns around where they’re moving to and from, and how they are getting in or out and then we can put preventative measures in place if we need to. It could be there’s a hole in the building they are using to gain entry.”
The digital devices connect to Flick’s server via a sim card which means they can connect from practically anywhere so long as there is mobile phone service.
Flick’s ‘flagship product’ is called a Smart Box which can catch up to eight rats, depending on their size, or as many as 50 mice – and it doesn’t need a technician on site. It resets itself automatically and lets the Flick team know when the box is full and needs emptying.
Another device uses an electrically powered guillotine that snaps the rodent’s spine. “They are killed instantaneously without any pain or suffering and their demise is reported back to Flick’s operations centre.”
Why pest monitoring is essential for businesses
Obviously, it is very bad publicity for manufacturers or retailers in the food industry to have their customers finding foreign pest parts in their food or seeing them running round in a store. But Radman says that while companies understand that danger, they often overlook the cost implications of pests at the procurement level.
With companies under pressure to control costs, it might seem tempting to cut back on the pest control budget – but the financial implications of not having a robust detection and management program in place can be devastating.
The loss of business from having a store closed by health authorities is significant, explains Radman. “We are not talking about spending thousands to upgrade the store’s pest control, rather the millions of dollars in lost revenue during that period of closure – and then the brand’s reputation.”
On the manufacturing side, rodents may impact operations and logistics as well. If they’re running along cable trays and chewing through cables, they interrupt production and there’s a cost implication to that.
Manufacturers and retailers alike need to consider what could go wrong if they don’t manage pest control carefully, Radman advises. “They need to carry out internal risk analysis because no business can afford to close a store or a factory down for a few days or a week and lose a few million dollars. And that is quite apart from the health risks and all the other problems associated with pests and rodents.”
The company monitors and eliminates most types of pests, including rodents, cockroaches, insects, birds, spiders, and even snakes. Solutions range from preventative maintenance such as installing spikes or netting to keep birds away – to active measures like traps. The company will also survey buildings for the presence of termites.
A useful spin-off from the digital monitoring systems is that Flick has been able to accumulate a lot of data for around five years – and that data capture is growing as more and more customers install digital monitoring services. Currently, there are more than 500,000 Smart devices installed at customer sites globally, with over 55,000 devices in Australia alone. This is helping the company spot seasonal and climate-related trends, and might in the future – with the help of AI – enable the prediction of pest infestations or outbreaks.
