Selling safety to the world

By DANIEL RIORDAN

A small Auckland company that once made starting gates for horse races has headed off international competition to supply safety communications systems covering a fifth of the world's oceans.

Electronic Navigation (ENL) is supplying its DataMaster computer system to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which will use it to monitor the Australian sector of the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS).

Left in its wake for the contract, worth $1 million to ENL, were rivals believed to include Telstra and Boeing. TVNZ transmission subsidiary BCL also picked up part of the Australian contract.

Two years ago, ENL pipped Japanese and European companies to win the contract to supply Zealand marine safety authorities.

The area monitored by DataMaster covers half the Pacific and half the Indian Ocean from Antarctica to the equator.

The system consists of industrial PCs with specialised digital signal processor cards running custom software operating radios used to monitor the open seas.

Ships in distress hit panic buttons that automatically send signals picked up by receivers, usually in remote locations safe from electrical interference. These are then decoded and forwarded to GMDSS centres in Wellington and Canberra.

The receiver in New Zealand is in Taupo and those in Australia are 600km inland from Perth and in rural Queensland.

ENL is also talking to maritime safety authorities in Hong Kong and the Pacific Islands about supplying them.

The company's software operates with off-the-shelf hardware, including PCs, receivers and transmitters, which keeps the costs down.

ENL was started after the Second World War by former merchant navy technicians who originally developed radio direction finders for fishing boats. The company has continued to develop products for the fishing industry but makes most of its money importing and distributing a wide range of marine equipment.

Later came forays into making taxi meters and horse racing gates, on the whim of a former director. Both ventures flopped.

Complaints by many of its customers about the cost of imported marine communications gear prompted ENL several years ago to focus on research and development. Out of that effort grew DataMaster.

The privately owned company's sales are in the mid-teens, between $10 and $20 million, says general manager Neil Anderson. Exports account for 20 to 30 per cent of that figure and are rising.

Seven of the company's 40 staff work from a Nelson branch office; the rest are in Westhaven.

A new product for the fishing industry with significant export potential is soon to be unveiled.