FIRST CHIP AND PIN, NOW CHIP AND COFFIN

AssetTrac, a small hi-tech business based at Bolney Road, Cowfold, sells systems which can be used to keep track of valuables, IT equipment, cars, antiques, bicycles '¦ and even coffins and gravestones.

Stephen Laing, of AssetTrac, told then West Sussex Gazette: "At least half of our business is involved in the bereavement industry.

"Cemeteries in Brighton, Portsmouth and Eastbourne are using our software to record details of risk assessments on memorial headstones.

"Headstones have to be checked regularly to make sure they are not likely to topple over '“ because people have been killed by falling memorial stones.

"We can also supply radio frequency microchips which can be used in coffins.

"The idea was devised originally in response to a request in 1999 from the Natural Burial Company at Leicester to provide a non-invasive method of marking graves in their burial sites.

"Generally speaking, in natural burial sites, there are no vertical memorials to mark the graves, so it is necessary to identify the exact position of the graves to facilitate family visits, to make it possible to bury a spouse in or near their partner's grave or even to identify graves if there is a need for exhumation.

For full story see West Sussex Gazette July 11