Box clever

Black boxes usually conjure up images of air crashes and desperate searches to find the key device that it is hoped will reveal the reasons behind air accidents.

Black box technology, however, isn't the sole preserve of the aviation industry. Similar technology is being increasingly employed in other sectors and a Dublin-based company has developed a black box specifically for use in the marine business.

Techworks Marine's black box is a device packed with oceanographic and meteorological sensors and is designed to operate 24/7, 365 days a year in hostile environments, gathering and transmitting data in real time from the ocean.

It may not be as exciting as the aircraft variety, but the technology is playing a key role in the growing aquaculture industry, according to Techworks Marine's managing director and co-founder Charlotte O'Kelly.

"We give our clients a holistic overview of what is happening in the water at the location they want to monitor," she says. "We integrate different high-end sensors into the black box which is our data acquisition and transmission system and it sends data home at different intervals depending on the client."

Typical customers for the product are companies operating in the fish-farming industry.

In fact, Bord Iascaigh Mhara has grant-aided some companies in the purchase of the equipment.

"In a fish farm, it sends live data back every 30 minutes. So the fish farmer accessing his site online by our secure webpage can see what is happening in the water around the fish and can pick up events like harmful algae blooms which can be quite detrimental to fish stocks. You can react quickly on the back of good quality data."

The importance of protecting marine stocks was brought into sharp focus this week with the Government ordering local councils to protect water quality in areas where shellfish are grown, or face heavy penalties.

Techworks Marine's technology is also being employed in other areas. The company is developing equipment for the Irish Marine Institute and the EPA and it has also developed a real time wave and tide gauge which the Geological Survey of Ireland is using for seabed mapping purposes.

The company was set up by O'Kelly and Philip Trickett in 2002. Both are trained oceanographers, while Trickett is also an electronics engineer. The two of them had been working in the marine technology industry and saw a niche to provide a robust data acquisition and transmission system for the industry.

"We had very strong scientific and technical backgrounds and savvy but no formal business or other training," O'Kelly says, "but having seen a lot of other businesses develop as consultancies on a research grant here and research grant there, we decided we wanted to have a proper business where we could actually assure people's salaries as well as our own moving forward, rather than relying on three-year cycles of research grants."

Nor did they want their company to be some kind of lifestyle business, so O'Kelly enrolled in a year-long business development programme as part of DIT's Hothouse project development centre. Initially they were also given incubation space in DIT's East Wall facility and after a year moved to Dún Laoghaire.

About 2½ years were spent researching and developing the product, with both of them supplementing revenues through consultancy work.

They also received grant aid from Enterprise Ireland and support from the Dublin City Enterprise Board as well as Denis O'Brien's Island Capital.

Techworks Marine has picked up a host of awards, including winner of the Innovation and New Technology award in the Shell LiveWIRE Young Business Start Up Awards and second prize in the 2003 Coca-Cola National Enterprise Awards.

The real test, though, is winning business, which the company has been doing since it unveiled its black box. Recently it started working with Pan Fish Scotland, a world leader in salmon farming, a move that could really catapult the company into the big time.

"The core of our business is still Irish-led but the Irish market is only so big. The Irish market is a great market to develop yourself but really for growing the business you have to have aspirations outside of Ireland. We are very lucky that Scotland is on our doorstep and aquaculture in Scotland is big money."

O'Kelly says the results of many years of hard work are starting to pay off.

"Everyone says it's going to take you three years to get your business up and running but it is more like five to start seeing any progress," she says.

"In this company we are still 75 per cent focused on R&D on an ongoing basis because we always have to be improving, making new products. I think it takes five to seven years to see things happening. We're seeing it now in the balance sheet."