TREEMETRICS, THE Cork start-up which has developed tools to measure the potential yield of growing forests, has signed up Internet and gaming entrepreneur Dylan Collins as its chairman.
It is understood Mr Collins has also made an investment in Treemetrics.
The news comes as Treemetrics announced it has indexed more than 11 million trees worldwide, which it says gives it “the largest forestry analytics database in the world”.
The company estimates that its technology has generated €20 million in revenue savings for its customers, who are located in 16 countries, over the last year.
“On average 20 per cent of the forest value is lost at harvest time,” said Enda Keane, chief executive of Treemetrics. “In the old world of measurement you didn’t know what you had until you actually cut it.”
Once a forest is measured and the data is uploaded to Treemetrics’ cloud-based platform, its analytics and modelling tools can show the different yields that can be achieved depending on the size and lengths of logs cut.
Forests cover more than 25 per cent of the planet’s surface and the global forestry market is worth over €50 billion. But despite this, tools for its measurement and analysis have remained virtually unchanged for the last 100 years.
“People talk about the big data industry, well this is literally some of the biggest data in the world,” said Mr Keane. “The world’s forests are critical to our well-being; they keep us alive (by absorbing carbon dioxide) and they pay for pensions (through government ownership), yet we lose over €10 billion in revenue each year because most measurement is still done using 19th century technology.”
Mr Collins, who founded and sold Demonware and Jolt Online Gaming to international games companies, said he believed Treemetrics is “one of the most important companies in the world right now”.
Treemetrics was founded in 2005 by Mr Keane and chief operations officer Garret Mullooly, both of whom are qualified foresters.
While the company attracted seed funding from Enterprise Equity and later state agency Enterprise Ireland, it has primarily been backed by private investors and management.
It has also received mentoring, advice and other supports through its involvement in IBM’s SmartCamp initiative, which Mr Keane singled out as being instrumental in helping Treemetrics refine its business model.
However Mr Keane said the company was generating revenues before it had completed its product. The company’s first customer was the Austrian government and it has primarily sold its services to state forestry agencies around the world.
Treemetrics employs 12 staff at its offices in Cork which the Taoiseach will visit today to announce its international expansion.
