In the early 1980’s Jeff Procter, an accountant, started a hobby business supplying aquaculture lights to local farmers on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, for use at their mussel and fish farms.

What started out as a recreational job, however, would become a full-time business when about 20 years later this accountant found a niche market and transitioned his business from supplying for farmers to delivering to customers including the United States Navy and Air Force.

Sealite Sales Director - Jeff’s son, Chris Procter, said this move to make the business a full-time enterprise took place in about 2000. 

“It was prompted by the introduction of Light Emitting Diodes (LED). Dad saw the advantages of this capability and set out to build lights and navigational aids utilising it,” Mr Procter said.

A LED is a more efficient form of lighting than traditional lights, which use incandescent globes. LED lights draw a lot less power and as a result require less maintenance.

“For example, a LED light can reasonably be expected to run for up to 100,000 hours - rarely needing to be changed; where a traditional light globe might be expected to operate for just 4,000 hours,” Mr Procter said.

“Sealite was the second company globally to apply the technology in the development of navigational aids.

“We still only have a handful of competitors world wide across a variety of market segments,” he said.

Upon incorporating LED technology the company quickly secured international defence contracts. Its first with the United States (US) Navy, was obtained at about the time that Jeff Procter chose to make his hobby business a full-time enterprise; and this was soon followed by a couple of contracts with the US Air Force to provide perimeter marking.

Mr Procter said at this stage the only suppliers globally were Sealite and a Japanese firm called Zenilite.

Today, the company has about 40 staff including hardware, software, electrical and aeronautical engineers; a team of about 25 production staff; and 10 sales and marketing personnel.

Sealite is split into two divisions, marine and aviation. On the marine side the company builds navigational aids including buoys- building the mouldings in house to which they fit customer’s requirements including lights, Global Positioning Systems and telemetry gear. The aviation division builds remote solar powered air field lighting.

“We’ve sold a lot of the airfield product for use in Iraq – where expedient facilities have been required because of inadequate time to establish more permanent systems,” Mr Procter said.

“Being solar powered there is no underground cabling or wiring and the capability, which is light sensitive, will turn itself on and off when required – lasting for about seven years,” he said.

Sealite’s latest project is the development of a prototype radio controlled lighting system- with the intended customer being the US Army.

“Its features will include the ability for an operator to control individual lights, colours and characteristics within a system; and an ability to switch the lighting system from visual light to infrared,” Mr Procter said.

“A lot of our product development is based on customer feedback. This product idea came to fruition as a result of discussions with clientele in the US, and the Malaysia Air Force.

“Most of our major Defence work has been US based to date.  We have a few competitors around the world for this market, but try to keep ahead by continuously improving the product.

“The idea behind the radio system was to build a capability that was trailer borne; independent from any grid connected power – solar powered; and could be deployed, ideally within 20 minutes.
 
“We plan to exhibit this system this month at an industry exhibition in Alabama, US. And, we anticipate that it will be available on the market around March,” Chris said.

Global Positioning Systems and telemetry gear fitted to Sealite buoys enable back to base messages to be delivered to operators, should the capability traverse from its set location.