Maestrano acquisition Airsight wins government contract in Australia

Transport corridor analytics artificial intelligence provider Maestrano Group announced a new contract with the Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy, won by its recently acquired subsidiary, Airsight, on Friday.

The AIM-traded firm said the department was tasked with protecting certain regions in Northern Australia from the effects of uranium mining.

It said the last operational mine in the region was required to cease operations in 2021, with decommissioning and revegetation of the site to finish by 2026.

The department was developing methods to monitor revegetation of the site, and was “operationalising” the use of drone-based technologies to ensure that the revegetated site remained on a sustainable trajectory to become similar to the surrounding environment.

Airsight would equip a number of vertical takeoff and landing drones with Airsight NextCoretm ‘Light Direction and Ranging’ (LiDAR) scanning units.

The drones would have the necessary technical requirements to achieve ‘Beyond Visual Line of Site’ (BVLOS) operations as outlined by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority of Australia.

It said the drone payload would include hyperspectral and multispectral sensors, integrated with the LiDAR capability.

The drones would acquire data from the savanna ecosystem in the Kakadu National Park of Australia’s Northern Territory.

Maestrano said the data that was acquired would be capable of deriving metrics about trees in this ecosystem to include tree height, canopy depth, canopy diameters and tree diameter.

“We are proud and delighted to announce this contract, which features our industry-leading NextCore LiDAR systems and our ability to integrate complex sensors for specialised aerial surveying over large areas,” said Nick Smith, co-founder of Airsight and vice-president of sales for Maestrano.

Andrew Pearson, chief executive officer of Maestrano, added that the win was a “fantastic achievement” by Nick Smith and his team, proving the competitive advantage of the “world-leading” technology.

“NextCore units are designed and manufactured by Airsight and used by customers throughout Australia and Japan.

“NextCore is also a core component of our Corridor.ai system, the world's leading automated defect detection and management platform.”

At 0822 GMT, shares in Maestrano Group were up 3.57% at 1.45p.