Australian marine electronics company GME celebrates 50 years

by Tracey Johnstone on 25 Sep 2009 Australian electronics company GME celebrates this year a significant milestone; 50 years of designing and supplying world-class radio communications equipment to the marine industry.

Founded in 1959 by avid sailor Ted Dunn, Greenwich Marine Electronics, more commonly known as GME, originally started out as a small, two-way communications company, servicing the land communications market. Then in the early years Dunn saw an opportunity to also develop emergency beacons alongside his two-way communications business.

GME marine marketing manager Matthew Heap reports GME has now been making EPIRBs for almost 30 years. 'Fast forward to today’s communications and GME is still very strong in the land communication side of the business. We sell a lot of the two-way CB radios that go into people’s vehicles, such as four wheel drives.

The marine side of the business gained recognition in 2004 when GME received the prestigious international Marine Equipment Trade Show Dame Award for the new digital 406 EPIRB.

'What GME was able to do was bring down the price with the technology developed in their engineering department and through manufacturing here in Sydney. We were able to develop an EPIRB that was available for the mass market.

When the 406 EPIRB came out they were extremely expensive. Now they have to be available to the wider market because of the legislation that is in place in Australia.:

Earlier this year there was a significant shortage of 406 EPIRBs due to Government legislation which came into force on 1 February 2009. 'The majority of the marine market left the purchase of a new EPIRB to the last minute.

'We realised that there was going to be a huge demand and increased our production facility to a point where we couldn’t complete it anymore due to space constraints in the factory. We were very active, trying to meet demands, but we still weren’t quite able to do it. It’s now no problem. There’s plenty of stock everywhere and we’re continuing to supply good numbers to the boating fraternity.

EPIRBs are GME’s best known international export. The company also exports quite a bit of radio communications equipment; marine, land and entertainment. 'Entertainment seems to be a sought after product internationally. We have distributors or sub-agents in most countries including America, many countries in Europe, South Africa and Asia. We’re quite well covered and have Sean Griffin looking after our international business.'

GME also manufactures some of its products in China, but all its emergency beacons, both EPIRBs and PRBs are made in Australia.

'One of the reasons for that is that we can manufacture them for a very competitive price and there is the safety aspect. The number of tests and the quality assurance that the units have to go through to ensure they come out at the end of the production line as a full working emergency beacon are very stringent. There is a large process that they go through where the units are tested at every stage. We keep that in-house so that we can monitor it and keep all our records. We have to keep records of every beacon that leaves.

'Obviously, for equipment like marine stereos and speakers, to keep the cost competitive, we have partners overseas that build to our specifications,' Heap said.

Continuing the tradition of manufacturing innovative design marine communications equipment, GME has now released a new range of antennas which GME said are unique. They come with a base and antenna whip. The base is the ABL012. 'What we’ve been able to produce is one base that suits all varieties of antennas whether it is broadcast, 27 meg or VHF.

'We’re quite pleased with the fact that we’ve got one base and three different styles of whip that can screw into it. This provides greater flexibility for customers; they don’t have to think about it. They can walk into a shop and go ‘I need one base and I’ll choose which antenna I want it to go into’. Or it means, if they put two antennas onto a boat, they’ve got a matching pair andthey look the same. If they break any of the whips they can easily change them over.'

GME is also heavily into the design end of the business. For instance, with its CD players, GME basically receives the decks in from overseas and puts them into waterproof housing. 'Boats can be very humid so we try address that with our electronics by having all the processing boards conformally coated which means they will repel moisture. They won’t live under water, but they can stand up to the high humidity experienced in a boating environment.'

All GME speakers are waterproof and carry a three year warranty. 'We get so few back proving the quality of the speaker is pretty good.'

Another area of the GME business is 27meg and VHF radio communications. The company manufactures small VHF hand-held radios which have a waterproof rating of IP54. They are note submersible, but are certainly splash proof. 'We’ve been doing VHF for a long time. We have two types of VHF - the standard VHF and the DSC VHF.

'Unfortunately the DSC VHF isn’t starting to take over yet. The main reason for this is in Australia, for your DSC to work effectively, you have to be able to program your MMSI number into it. To get an MMSI number from AMSA (Australian Maritime Safety Authority), you have to produce a Radio Operator’s License certificate.

'To get that certificate, people have to go on a course. You can do it online or in a classroom, but people get turned off having to do that because it’s time consuming and it costs them additional money, so they don’t really see the advantage of using DSC.'

Commercial ships over 300 tonnes that travel into international waters have to carry a DSC VHF radio, but pleasure boats don’t have this requirement as yet.

'GME’s market is the pleasure boat market. When you see there is 200,000 people who jump into their tinny on a weekend to go fishing, they are not particularly bothered about having a DSC VHF radio. They’re more likely to put in a standard VHF or a 27meg. I would love it if they changed it so that when you do your boat license they tag on an extra hour’s tuition and you do the test so that you’re signed off to have your radio operator’s license too. It’s something I’ve discussed with AMSA and the authorities who do the certificates. Until it becomes easier for people to get that certificate, they’re not going to bother using DSC.'

GME has also recently designed in-house the GP450X marine plotter which was released to the marked in May 2009. The designers used a GPS engine that was readily available from China, but then redesigned it using their Sydney-based engineers to give it the GME feel and look, and to tie in with our other products.

'It’s a little 4.5 monochrome GPS plotter with excellent screen resolution and very good in direct sunlight. It has an external 12 channel GPS antenna and seven customisable pages. The unit is very good for people who want to go from A to B or want to plot a course down the coast and follow it. People like it because it also has big digits. We launched it at Sanctuary Cove Boat Show and have had a pretty good response. Coming into the summer season we’re expecting it to pick up a little more. It got us into the GPS market and it compliments our other products, especially our DSE VHF where you can hook it up to unit. When you use the DSE you can transmit your latitude and longitude.'

The GME carries two types of Personal Locator Beacons, mandatory through Yachting Australia’s Special Regulations for Category 1 and 2 races, are both manufactured in Australia.

The MT410G with integrated GPS is GME’s most popular unit. 'If someone should fall overboard and it’s not noticed that they’ve gone, you would want something like that on your person. I guess that’s why they (YA) made it mandatory because accidents can happen, es