Multi-site borehole and pump telemetry
Solar-powered telemetry across dozens of pumps and boreholes with flow, pressure, run-hour and abstraction logging.
Industry · Agriculture
Automation and telemetry for farms, packhouses and agri-processors.
Irrigation control, packhouse automation, cold-chain monitoring, dairy and feed automation, water reticulation and remote telemetry — built for Gauteng and surrounding agricultural operations.
Industry Challenges
Agriculture runs on margins, water and weather — and increasingly, on data.
Farm and packhouse operations face rising input costs, water restrictions, escalating compliance, labour scarcity and unpredictable energy supply. Promation SA delivers control and monitoring systems that let owners and managers run distributed operations with real visibility — from boreholes and pivots to packing lines and cold rooms.
Water management & scarcity
Boreholes, dams, pivots and drip systems must be measured and controlled — not estimated — to comply with allocations and protect yield.
Energy cost & solar integration
Diesel pumping, peak-tariff irrigation and uncoordinated solar all erode margin without proper control logic.
Equipment failures in remote locations
A failed pump or compressor discovered the next morning can cost a season's yield or a cold room of stock.
Export compliance & traceability
GlobalG.A.P., SIZA, FSSC 22000 and retailer audits demand documented temperatures, treatments and batch records.
Weather and climate volatility
Frost, heat events and rainfall extremes need automatic response — not manual reaction from a tractor cab.
Distributed sites, limited connectivity
Operations spread across kilometres of orchards, fields and outbuildings with patchy cellular and no fibre.
Common Operational Problems
What we hear from the plant floor.
01
Borehole and pump failures only noticed when crops wilt
Lost yield, emergency callouts and avoidable replacement of motors and impellers that ran dry undetected.
02
Cold rooms warming up overnight without an alarm
Spoiled stock worth more than the entire monitoring system, plus rejected retailer consignments and brand damage.
03
Solar systems that fight the existing electrical layout
Inverters tripping, generators starting unnecessarily and pumps running on the wrong supply — paying for power that should have been free.
04
Irrigation schedules that ignore soil and weather data
Over-watering, fertigation waste, leaching and water-use violations under tightening allocations.
05
Packhouse lines built up over years with no documentation
Breakdowns during peak season with no electrical drawings, no PLC backups and no one who fully understands the logic.
06
Dairy and feed automation running on legacy controllers
Recipe errors, missed milking windows and welfare risks when ageing systems glitch with no support path.
07
Compliance reports compiled by hand from log books
Hours of administrative work and audit findings that could be eliminated with automatic, tamper-resistant records.
Promation SA Solutions
How we solve them.
01
Remote farm telemetry
Solar-powered, cellular and LoRaWAN telemetry for boreholes, dams, pumps, tanks and weather stations — visible from anywhere.
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Irrigation & fertigation control
Automated pivot, drip and fertigation control tied to soil moisture, evapotranspiration and tariff windows.
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Packhouse & line automation
PLC, SCADA and recipe control for grading, sorting, packing and palletising lines — designed for season-long uptime.
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Electrical & solar integration
Three-phase electrical design, MCCs and PV/BESS integration for farms, packhouses and pump stations.
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Cold chain monitoring
Cold room, reefer and ripening room monitoring with multi-channel alarms and audit-grade temperature records.
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Dairy, piggery & feed
Milking parlour automation, feed mill control, ventilation and welfare monitoring built for ag duty cycles.
Explore serviceBenefits
Outcomes we engineer for.
Lower input cost
Water, electricity, diesel and fertiliser consumption measured, attributed and continuously reduced.
Crop & stock protection
Frost, temperature and equipment alarms catch failures before they damage yield or product.
Audit-ready records
Automatic logs for GlobalG.A.P., SIZA, retailer and water-authority audits — without the binder shuffle.
True operational control
Owner and manager dashboards across every site, pump and cold room — one screen, one source of truth.
Example Use Cases
Representative engagements.
Illustrative use cases that typify the kind of work Promation SA delivers in this sector.
Packhouse PLC and SCADA upgrade
Replacement of legacy controllers on a fruit packline with a modern, documented platform — completed in the off-season window.
Cold-store monitoring and alarming
Multi-zone temperature and door-status monitoring with SMS, app and voice escalation across all controlled-atmosphere stores.
Solar, BESS and generator integration
Hybrid energy system tied to irrigation scheduling so pumping prioritises solar and avoids peak-tariff windows.
Fertigation automation
Recipe-driven fertigation tied to soil moisture and crop stage, eliminating manual mixing errors and leaching.
Dairy parlour and feed mill control
Automation upgrade of milking, cooling and feed-mixing systems with welfare and quality monitoring built in.
Why Promation SA
The right partner for agriculture.
Engineering depth, sector familiarity and single-contract accountability — the combination most operators in this industry struggle to find.
Pretoria & Gauteng rooted
Local engineering presence with deep familiarity of regional water, energy and connectivity realities.
Off-grid practical
We design for solar, BESS and intermittent connectivity by default — not as an afterthought for urban sites.
Season-aware delivery
Project planning aligned to harvest, packing and breeding windows — not generic project schedules.
Compliance-grade data
Records produced by our systems stand up to retailer, export and water-authority scrutiny without rework.
FAQ
Common questions.
Can you monitor sites with no cellular signal?
Yes. We use a mix of LoRaWAN, point-to-point radio, satellite and store-and-forward edge gateways so even genuinely remote sites get reliable telemetry.
Do you integrate with our existing pivots, pumps and inverters?
Almost always. We bridge Modbus, Profibus, proprietary pump controllers and inverter protocols into one common view — without replacing working hardware.
Can you design a hybrid solar and generator system for our farm?
Yes. We design grid-tied, hybrid and off-grid systems sized around your actual load profile, with control logic that prioritises solar, manages generators and protects critical loads.
Will the system survive farm conditions?
Yes. Hardware is specified for dust, heat, vibration, surge and outdoor exposure — and panels are built and tested in our workshop before installation.
How do you protect against lightning and surges?
Coordinated surge protection, proper earthing and isolated I/O are part of every farm design — agricultural sites see far more transients than typical industrial ones.
Do you support GlobalG.A.P., SIZA and retailer audits?
Yes. Our monitoring and control systems produce automatic, time-stamped, tamper-resistant records suitable for these audit regimes.
Can owners view everything from a phone?
Yes. Role-based mobile dashboards give owners, managers and operators the right view of the right data — with controlled remote actions where appropriate.
Book a Consultation
Discuss agriculture with a senior engineer.
Start with a free 15-minute discovery call. We'll review your situation and outline practical next steps — at no cost.