Every business has two types of costs - operational costs and capital costs.
In the pest control industry the operational costs are by far the highest: labour, petrol, insurance, parking fees, etc. Operational costs never come down, they only go up.
An investment in capital equipment that reduces operational costs makes sense because when the savings in the operational costs pays off the cost of the capital equipment, the savings in the operational costs continues on for many years.
The three case studies below show why an investment in the Traptec system makes sense.
CASE STUDY : A RESIDENTIAL TREATMENT
Pest control companies do a lot of treatments in the residential market often only use traps. They explain to the householders that with poisons the rodents can die in the walls or under the floor, and when they decay the smell is unbearable.
They usually install the traps and return every second day to check the traps, and on many visits they find only empty traps.
However in one installation they installed a Traptec system on a Monday (5 x Wedges, 1 x LED Base Station, and 1 x GSM Unit) with Wedges and traps in the attic, in the hot press, and under the kick-boards in the kitchen.
With their old way of working the pest technician would have visited the house on the Wednesday to find empty traps, and then again on Friday or Saturday only to find empty traps again. After the weekend he would have gone back to the house on Monday and again he would have found empty traps.
With the Traptec system these three visits were not necessary because at around 1.00am on the Tuesday (eight days after the installation) a Pest Alert email arrived, so on the Tuesday the technician removed the dead rodent and the Traptec equipment for use in the next treatment.
Travel costs to and from the house, petrol, van wear and tear etc when travelling plus the cost labour were saved on this treatment in the amount of €90.00.
When the same equipment is used in three or four treatments the capital cost of the Traptec equipment is paid for by the savings in operational costs.
When the same Traptec equipment is used in future treatments it will continue saving the pest control company money for many years to come.
CASE STUDY : A COMMERCIAL INSTALLATION
To service a remote wind farm the resident electrical engineer had to drive three hours from headquarters every six weeks to meet the pest technician on site to allow access to replace poison in the bait boxes.
After an hour on site he had a three hours return trip back to his office.
Mice chewed through some fibre optic cables putting the plant out of order for three days at a cost of €100,000 per day.
The control room where the damage occured was impossible to proof with many underfloor ducts carrying in the control cables from the wind turbines.
The wind farm operators realised that although the poison will kill the mice they will live on for another three or four days with plenty of time to cause more damage.
The wind farm operators asked the pest control company for other options. The pest technician said that traps would be better then poison because a trap would kill the mouse at first contact before it have time to breed and do damage.
However traps have to be checked regularly and the cost of visits to this remote site would be prohibitive.
So the pest control company installed the Traptec radio monitored trap system.
The wind farm operators were very happy with this improved option, and they liked the way the Traptec equipment sent regular heartbeat signals that proved that the system was protecting the plant 24/7.
The pest control company now only needed go to the site to meet the engineer whenever a Pest Alert email arrived.
The cost of the Traptec equipment to the pest control company was €660 (10 x Smartrap Mouse Boxes, 1 x LED Base Station, and 1 x GSM Unit) and the total installation time was 2 hours.
There are many business models to choose from regarding how the pest control company charges for the system.
In this case the pest control company added €200 for labour and charged the wind farm company €860 as an installation cost.
The pest control company is now renting the Traptec equipment to the wind farm company at a cost of €25 per month and agreed a fixed charge to meet the engineer on site to remove dead rodents and reset the system whenever a Pest Alert email arrives.
This installation is now far more profitable than the installation with poison bait boxes was, with a recurring revenue of €25 per month.
The Traptec equipment remains the property of the pest control company as a fixed asset making their business more valuable.
CASE STUDY : A MEAT PROCESSING PLANT
The pest technician was visiting a meat processing plant once a month to check bait boxes and replacing poison where necessary.
With more than an hour driving time and approximately three hours on site, the twelve visits per year made the operational cost of pest control in this plant very high.
One of this food company's biggest customers was a large supermarket chain in Germany and an auditor from the chain arrived to inspect the plant.
He requested that the plant become non-toxic, as he was concerned that the plant was very highly automated with few staff. He worried that a poisoned rodent might die unnoticed inside one of the packing machines. It could then be wrapped up with the food product only to be found by one of their customers.
He said that non-toxic biscuits in bait boxes were not acceptable, even with the pest technician on site for three hours every month. In his view the site would only have 36 hours of active pest control in a year, and because there are 8,760 hours in a year the site would have no active pest control 99% of the time.
He suggested to the Quality Assurance Manager that radio monitored traps be installed to provide 24/7 protection.
The Quality Assurance Manager asked the pest control company for a demonstration. He was very impressed when he received a Pest Alert email moments after a trap was tripped. He told the pest technician to put the system in as soon as possible.
The pest control company sold the Traptec equipment to the food company with a good profit margin, charged an installation fee to cover the cost of labour and increased his monthly charge to cover the costs of callouts when Pest Alerts arrive.
The pest technician now only needs to visit the site every three or four months, and whenever a Pest Alert email arrives. The technician's time on site can now be less then thirty minutes because he only has to check the Smartrap Mouse Box that has tripped with no need to check all the other traps on site.
The annual income from this installation is now higher and the operational costs are lower, the plant has a far superior Pest Control system and the auditor is happy.