INTERNATIONAL - Cartrack Holdings, the JSE-listed fleet management, stolen vehicle recovery and insurance telematics group, has had its prisoner tracking contract with the Singapore government renewed for another five years and said that it is positioning itself to place increased focus on this part of its business.
The group is also in discussions with vehicle original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) about the standard fitment of telematic devices and systems in vehicles.
Zak Calisto, the global chief executive of Cartrack, said yesterday that the group was talking to a lot of jurisdictions about its prisoner monitoring system, but many of them had contracts with a duration of 10 or seven years. “We are waiting for these contracts to come up, so we can have a go at the tenders.
"We are well positioned for those tenders,” he said. Calisto added that Cartrack had also employed somebody full time from January to focus on the prisoner monitoring business.
Prisoner tracking involves monitoring the movements of prisoners who are on parole to ensure they comply with their parole conditions. Calisto said Cartack had submitted a bid for a Correctional Services tender for prisoner monitoring, but the tender was subsequently retracted.
“But we are well positioned to give the government a good price and to assist them,” he said. Cartrack launched its prisoner tracking product in 2015 and secured a contract in Singapore, which introduced a Home Detention Scheme in 2000 that allowed eligible prisoners to spend the last part of their sentences in their own homes, subject to them having a monitoring system to track their movements.
Cartrack used the control room platform it uses for its fleet management system for the prisoner central monitoring system. Calisto said they were talking to a lot of OEMs, and specifically the Japanese OEMs at the moment, about installing telematic devices in their vehicles, which included how they would get subscriptions out of the vehicles that came out standard with these systems.
He said Cartrack was undoubtedly able to compete with other global telematics companies and did not believe there was any negative perception to Cartrack because it was a South African company. “We are among the top 10 companies globally in this market in terms of subscribers, revenue and profitability,” he said.
Shares in Cartrack rose 1.90percent yesterday on the JSE to close at R14.47.