OREANDA-NEWS. AKUA LLC announced today that Duesmann & Hensel Recycling has signed a contract for AKUA's data-as-a-service to provide cargo tracking and humidity monitoring of precious metals recycled from used catalytic converters worldwide.

The award is a result of a successful proof-of-concept trial conducted in June 2016 for shipments of recovered precious metals from the Duesmann & Hensel Recycling processing facility in Aschaffenburg, Germany, to a metals post-processor in the USA. During the trial, humidity, tracking, and breach data were collected and evaluated to determine the effectiveness of AKUA's solution for moisture detection of the cargo.

"Duesmann & Hensel Recycling is a leader in recognizing that emerging advanced sensor technologies will improve the shipments of high value cargo such as precious metals," said AKUA's CEO, Neil Furukawa. "By creating an easy-to-use solution, AKUA has enabled Duesmann & Hensel Recycling to take full advantage of emerging Internet-of-things (IoT) technologies to benefit their business."

"AKUA successfully demonstrated how IoT devices can be utilized to improve the logistics efficiency and monitor the moisture conditions of our precious metals shipments," said Duesmann & Hensel Recycling Commercial Director Markus Theile. "Moisture has a significant impact on the weight of the processed precious metals from the recycled catalytic converters. The real-time moisture data collected will be analyzed to detect high humidity conditions during the logistics transport to develop improved processes for shipment."

The data from Duesmann & Hensel Recycling's shipments to the US will also be provided to the recently announced Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Division's "Container Security Device Technology Demonstration for the US/EU Global Supply Chain Pilot Project" research program. Working in close association with the European Union's CORE (Consistently Optimized Resilient) research effort, and with voluntary customer consent, AKUA's secure gateway platform service will provide cargo-tracking and breach-detection event data to the US Government's Supply Chain Visibility Platform. The data will be used in US and EU research into how CORE Shipping Information Pipeline data can enhance global shipping situational awareness and efficiency.