Supply Chains are the lifeblood of our economy.  From how a shellfish gets from the tideline to the table, to how a semi-conductor chip gets from a factory in Asia to a printer on a farm.  

As many of you know, We have been dealing with printer issues for the last few months.  Turns out we have the same issue as the Ford F-150 factories.  A shortage of inexpensive semiconductor chips is holding us up.  Fortunately we haven't had to stop production, we just had to switch printers. 

For our tagging and distributor clients, we will be shipping new Zebra Printers instead of the TSC printers we have been doing so far.  The TSC printers are great, but we we just can't get any. The Zebra printers are just as good so and seem to have a better supply. We are now certified resellers of both TSC and Zebra printers, giving us resiliency in this time of supply chain disruptions.  As always, they come with a 2 year warranty.  

As part of the switch, our line up of printers now includes:

1) Mobile printers: Ideal for printing less than 150 tags per day especially in remote locations. TSC Alpha 3r and Zebra 521Q.  The benefits of the mobile is they run on batteries for 2 days and are pretty durable (certified for 5' drops).  The drawback is the paper is thinner than other tags.

2) Industrial Printers: Ideal for printing more than 150 tags per day The Zebra ZT411.  The industrial holds ~760 to 950 tags per roll and prints on a thicker paper.  

Both printers work directly from the phone via Bluetooth--no need for cables.  Both use thermal printing so there is no smudging or ink to worry about.  You can easily switch between the two printer types: for instance if you want to print some tags on the boat and others back in the plant.  

The Aquaculture North America just published it's latest magazine, and our clients are in two separate articles:

1) Shellfish Growers Embrace New Technologies, by Lynn Fantom, profiles growers like Ted Cooney of Madhouse Oysters in Maryland

Cooney took the plunge from Excel spreadsheets to white boards to farm management software quickly, too. When Maine-based entrepreneur Chip Terry demonstrated how a new platform was “like a second brain” to manage tasks from cleaning to tumbling, Madhouse Oysters became one of the first customers of Oyster Tracker. The program also helped Cooney analyze productivity. “I can even look at it from home,” he adds. 

2) A sidebar article: New FDA Rule Triggers Issues on How To Tag and Trace tracks the looming regulatory changes and how Oyster Tracker can help folks stay compliant.  Including the following:

For their operation, Calm Cove Oyster Company, Duane Fagergren chose the digital system launched by Oyster Tracker last spring and already in use at 50 farms. He enters information on his iPhone, which is then stored in the Cloud. A small, weather-resistant portable printer lets him print out a tag with a QR code that “makes regulators happy with the chain of custody.” And if requirements change again, he isn’t stuck with outdated tags. Oyster Tracker will easily make the edit. Although Fagergren says “change is challenging,” he adds, “This has probably been the best business investment we made this year.”

Thanks to both Duane and Ted for doing amazing work and helping us continually improve our products.  

You can read the full articles at Aquaculture North America

We started thinking about shellfish tagging about a year ago. We were watching 

folks waste valuable time filling out harvester/dealer tags, log books, and generally dealing with tons of paperwork.  After talking to a lot of farmers, dealers, regulators and reading the 487 pages of the Model Ordinance, we finally launched our tagging solution in March of 2020--right as every farm shut down for Covid.  Despite the headwinds of a global pandemic, we had 41 new clients in less than 6 months.

So what have we learned? 

1) Paperwork Sucks: Regulations exist for good reasons, but complying with regulations is painful. No one became a farmer because they wanted to do paperwork. 

2) Most states are a little different:  despite the Model Ordinance most states have slightly different regulations (or interpretations of regulations). For example, Washington state wants you to collect water or animal temperature at harvest.  Florida wants to know what type of cooling you have.  Others want bulk tags handled differently. 

3) Paper is painful:  We (I) thought finding waterproof paper would be the easy part.  Turns out getting it on the right size rolls with the right perforation and in the right orientation is a lot harder than expected.  We sent 100s of useless rolls back to the factory. 

The future is becoming more obvious.  Now distributors can scan in the tag information--saving them time and money.  The QR codes lets us pass extended information that folks always want but doesn't fit on the tag (say tasting notes or a farmer 

profile).  We can also make farmer's lives easier by making it easier to do state filings and in the future printing invoices and other associated paperwork.  

We won (a grant)!  In a stroke of great luck and a testament to the awesome team at Oyster Tracker, we have been awarded a grant from National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

This federal grant is to prove the technical and commercial feasibility of an easy to use, and inexpensive system to track shellfish from farm to table to improve food safety and meet the growing demand from consumers to know more about the sources of their food.

As one of the reviewers noted: 

The commercial benefit of the proposed technology is abundantly clear. The current system is antiquated and accompanied by high costs associated with utilizing it. With the growth of the shellfish industry and the increasingly educated consumer base the technology offered by this project should be in high demand.

Over the next 6 months, Shellfish Solutions will work with companies in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Virginia to beta test a new solution that utilizes mobile phones, thermal printers, and cloud computing.  The ultimate goal is to build a system that

1. Saves farms and distributors money/time
2. Makes it easier for all market participants to comply with federal and state regulations
3. Builds a traceability chain from the tideline to the table for all shellfish.  

This work build on the success of Oyster Tracker’s current products: Farm Manager and Tagging Systems.  If you are interested in learning more, please reach out.