Osborne Park radio communications manufacturer Omnitronics is set to open its first overseas office in the US in July to take advantage of increased opportunities and higher demand.
Osborne Park radio communications manufacturer Omnitronics is set to open its first overseas office in the US in July to take advantage of increased opportunities and higher demand.
Omnitronics believes changes in the US sparked by the 2001 terrorist attacks have made the market more accessible to its products.
Over the past six years, the company has positioned itself as one of Australia’s market leaders in aiding traditional radio communications in the resources, utilities and transport sectors and emergency services to cross over to digital technology.
It has been selling its products into North America using distributors.
Chief executive John Florenca said a change in attitude within the industry prompted the company to combine new technologies to bridge traditional radio communications into the digital internet protocol world.
“We integrated this area [traditional radio communications] into the broader IT infrastructure through the VoIP [Voice over Internet Protocol] technology,” Mr Florenca said.
“It’s what customers wanted because it basically gives them lower costs in the end and greater flexibility in being able to set up and access radio networks.”
Over the past two years, the company has invested about $250,000 into a new range of products that make it easier to link an office in the corporate world to an isolated operational area.
For example, a project manager of a mining company can pick up a compatible telephone from their office and speak with underground construction staff at a mine site 1,400 kilometres away.
The range of products that provide this service has already received huge interest in Australia, with Omnitronics finding it hard to keep up demand.
“These new products are generating about 20 per cent of our business now, so that’s pretty good,” Mr Florenca said.
In America, Mr Florenca said Omnitronics’ products will be make it easier to connect the old world of technology with the new world.
“On 9/11, they had all these emergency services that came out to help out, but what they found was they couldn’t actually communicate with each other because they have different radio networks,” Mr Florenca said.
“That sparked off this big push for inter-operability and the US government has set up various programs, outlining something in the order of a $1 billion to $2 billion budget to put in place technology and systems to get people to communicate better.”
“That’s part of what we’re doing as well, our products allow them to do this.”
Omnitronics has a three-year growth strategy for the US and director Alan Parker will spend the next two years establishing the office.
“We’re not a big company, we are working in a niche market. I guess the interesting thing is that we’ll compete against companies that are around 20 to 100 times bigger than us,” Mr Florenca said.
The company’s first international steps started three years ago when Omnitronics began exporting through distributors in Canada, the US, South-East Asia, France, Norway and the UK.
