Extreme CCTV Inc., Burnaby, British Columbia, acquired Forward Vision CCTV Ltd., a UK designer, developer and manufacturer of intelligent mechanical PTZ cameras. The acquisition has been in the works for about one year, said Jack Gin, president and CEO of Extreme CCTV. “It really started to accelerate when our executives visited each other’s companies. We could see a nice fit with our engineering capabilities, our complimentary products and just the corporate culture,†Gin said.
This acquisition offers Extreme the chance to market these products around the world, increase revenue and the bottom line, Gin said. It also offers an increase in engineering capability, as the companies already are developing product concepts and prototypes together. The three founding engineers of Forward Vision will be retained as key people in the company.
Forward Vision has developed a PTZ camera that is compact, ruggedized and made for electro-mechanical and optical performance. Their flagship product, the Mic1-400, now dots the British surveillance landscape at hundreds of locations for town center surveillance and transportation systems security. “Forward Vision has been moving thousands of cameras, in the British security landscape, in town centers, transit systems, on the ground in London and under ground,†Gin said.
For its latest completed fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2005, Forward Vision had revenues of £3.3 million. The company has delivered sales growth of 20 percent or more annually in each of the last three years while being consistently profitable.
The Forward Vision product portfolio is specifically targeted at the security demands of critical infrastructure and Homeland Security. Forward Vision’s recent developments that integrate with or embed technologies in thermal sensing, radar detection, electronic gyro-stabilization and internet protocol (IP) broaden the future sales outlook for Forward Vision products. For more information on Extreme CCTV visit,www.extremecctv.com.
