A Leader in Livestock Health Management
A global smart farm management company, uLikeKorea Co. announced on Nov. 28 that it has successfully developed the world’s first bio-capsule for sheep health management. With the newly developed bio-capsule, uLikeKorea plans to enter the global sheep market (1.2 billion sheep in the world) and will start with New Zealand and Australian market in the first half of 2020.
uLikeKorea has already successfully developed and commercialized the bio-capsule for cows and calf (Livecare), which facilitated its development of the world’s first bio-capsule for sheep health management. It took three years of R&D to develop the bio-capsule for sheep.
The company’s CEO Kim Hee-jin stated that she was excited to have developed the bio-capsule for sheep where the market lacked specialized technology to manage sheep’s health. She further stated that through this development, uLikekorea has further differentiated itself in this niche market and will move forward to provide global livestock health management services.
Currently, uLikeKorea has filed for patents for the sheep bio-capsule technology and will commercialize it in the first half of 2020.
In particular, uLikeKorea plans to enter markets such as Australia and New Zealand where there are well-developed sheep market and serve markets such as the Middle East where sheep consumption is among the highest in the world.
Kim said, “Sheep are susceptible to diseases including the foot-and-mouth disease and require a high level of care. We have researched and studied sheep for the past three years and gone through various iterations of technology before we were able to finally develop the bio-capsule.”
She further said, “Starting in 2020, we will be expanding our Livecare services to other livestock animals such as pigs and horses. We want to contribute to clean and transparent food chain to the consumers and help the industry the produce safer and cleaner food products.”
uLikeKorea will accelerate Livecare global expansion through the introduction of sheep bio-capsule.
According to the U.N., there are 10 countries, including Australia, New Zealand, the U.K, and Ireland, that have combined export market value of over US$8 billion and the premium market for sheep continues to expand.
According to the global sheep meat price index, the price of sheep meat increased by 77 percent over the last 10 years from 2008 to 2018, with global demand continuing to rise.
Having already secured over 500 million livestock biometric data, uLikeKorea plans to use this knowledge and know-how to further expand into the sheep market and have achieved significant inroad into the smart-farm market.
uLikeKorea is also expanding its physical presence by establishing offices in Denmark and Brazil in 2019.
As the only company that has over 500 million livestock biometric data, uLikeKorea has signed an agreement with global companies such as SoftBank (SoftBank Group Corp.) to promote Livecare in Australia.
uLikeKorea is the only Korean startup company to be selected by Microsoft as a partner in the agritech industry for the “MS IoT in Action” project in New Zealand (Auckland), Canada (Toronto), Japan (Tokyo), Korea (Seoul, Busan) and Australia (Melbourne).