Katam was originally a spinoff from the Swedish telecom industry, founded 2016 in Lund, Sweden. The founder’s intention was to crossbreed the forest industry with innovative and high-tech solutions, starting with a smartphone application for replacing caliper, relascope and other analogue forest measurement tools.
Since then, the company has grown rapidly with 15 persons engaged today. Our highly skilled forestry and GIS experts support our customers in introducing precision forestry into their operation. The whole team is strongly committed to our mission to maximize the utilization of forest land for the best of climate and society.
High precision forestry data
Katam is today a global provider of software-based services for forest data acquisition and analysis. High precision forestry data, where each single tree is registered, enables forest management to increase wood volume growth and production yield. These are key components for reducing CO2 net emission and at same time driving business for the global forest industry.
Focusing on the already existing industrial forest land
The growing forest is a corner stone for reducing the greenhouse gas net emissions and there is plenty of political initiatives for encouraging re-forestation and minimizing de-forestation. However, Katam’s primary focus is the already existing industrial forest land, that corresponds to > 60% of global forest land (planted or semi-natural forest). Our mission is to support the global forestry when migrating from traditional forestry into precision forestry and implementing the rewarding mix of increased production and climate benefits.
Used all over the world
The Katam service is used all over the world, in Europe, Africa, Americas and Asia. It is operationally being used in sub-tropical fast-growing forest plantations, with typically with the species Pinus Radiata, Eucalyptus, Akasia, Kautschuk, and Teak as well as in the Nordic forest segment, typically with Norwegian Spruce, Pinus Sylvestris etc. Sales and support offices are available in Sweden, Chile, and Brazil.
Based on standard consumer electronics
The Katam solution is based on highly available consumer electronics such as smartphones and consumer drones. Thus, a minimum of investments is needed for evaluating the solution and for improving operational efficiency. By using standard GIS based interfaces, Katam data can seamlessly be propagated directly to the field personnel and forestry machines as well as to standard forest management IT systems.
AI and computer vision
Katam’s core technology solution is based on AI, AR and computer vision. The Katam forest detection engine utilizes visual forest data, recorded by mobile devices moving on the ground (such as smartphones and forestry machines) and by UAVs flying both below and above tree canopies. The Katam forest data analysis is also including remote sensing forest data, from airplanes and satellites.
Our offering is expanding continuously, and several new services are to be released in the near future. Coming next is the autonomously flying KATAM™ ForestDrone, a service that will be released during first half of 2021.