Perth technology development company Mobilarm recently negotiated a deal with the world’s largest marine retailer, US company West Marine, to supply its award-winning crew monitoring system, MOBi-lert.
Perth technology development company Mobilarm recently negotiated a deal with the world’s largest marine retailer, US company West Marine, to supply its award-winning crew monitoring system, MOBi-lert.
The system, which continuously electronically monitors the status of every person on board a vessel, is being sold in West Marine’s top 20 stores and two follow-up orders have already been made.
The company estimates the US deal to be worth more than $5 million per annum.
Mobilarm’s head of marketing Matthew Foss said MOBi-lert was also being sold in New Zealand, had a distributor in the UK and was negotiating with distributors in South Africa, Greece, Spain and Italy.
Mr Foss said the Netherlands, Switzerland and France would be the next target markets.
“The heart of the system is a rechargeable and waterproof personal transmitter (PTX) which is the size of a whistle and is worn by every person on board,” he said.
“Each PTX maintains a constant link with a central console unit on the boat. Anything that breaks the link sets off a man overboard alarm.
“As soon as a crew member is in the water the automatic alarm is sounded and the vessel’s position is logged. The MOBi-lert console provides a graphic track-back screen to the exact point of where the crew member was lost.”
MOBi-lert was recognized at the international maritime industry’s Seatrade Awards, winning the safety at sea category.
The award is presented to a company that introduces or approves a product during the year which offers significant technical or procedural improvements leading to reduction in risk to human life at sea.
Mr Foss said MOBi-lert was an industry leading product which hit retail shelves in October last year. It took three years from concept to design.
“Nothing on the market is automatically operated,” he said. “You don’t need to be conscious for it to be activated or to access it.
“There are visual and audible alerts and it displays who, the time overboard and it sends the GPS coordinates which is very important for search and rescue teams.
“Inside 10 seconds the boat knows if someone is over.”
Mr Foss said all the search and rescue boats in WA had installed the MOBi-lert system which can also be linked to the boat’s overboard management system and the engine.
MOBi-lert is sold as a six pendant (six people) or two pendant (two people) system. The six pendant comes with a GPS antenna but the two pendant system doesn’t. The systems retail for $3000 and $2000 respectively.
“Any vessel where not everyone can be seen needs MOBi-lert,” Mr Foss said.
