ACR Electronics, Inc., a Cobham Company, designs and manufactures a complete line of safety and survival products including EPIRBs, P-ELTs/P-EPIRBs/PLBs, Bridge-based Information Systems, SARTs and safety accessories. The quality systems of this facility have been registered by UL to the ISO 9001:2000 Series Standards. Recognized as the world leader in safety and survival technologies, ACR has provided safety equipment to the aviation and marine industries as well as to the military since 1956.

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25th Anniversary Finds ACR President on Top of the World Paul Frank Celebrates Quarter of a Century with U.S.-based Manufacturer

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL -- While ACR Electronics, Inc. heads into its 50th year as the world leader in safety and survival technologies in 2006, ACR President Paul Frank celebrated a milestone of his own this month with 25 years of service with the manufacturing firm.

Frank, who joined ACR in 1980 as vice president of administration and became the company's president in 1994, has forged ACR into an international company through his emphasis on market driven strategies applied on a global scale. Starting with just a handful of international accounts in 1994, ACR today credits international sales for 20 percent of its total business, and has recently announced the formation of a European office headquartered in Austria. During his tenure as president, Frank said he has seen revenues nearly triple and company operating profits substantially increase each year.

ACR Electronics, Inc. (www.acrelectronics.com), which designs and manufactures a complete line of safety and survival products, including EPIRBs, P-ELTs/P-EPIRBs/PLBs, SARTs and safety accessories, recently entered the potentially lucrative area of bridge information systems.

To quickly ramp up and become a market leader, ACR acquired Austria-based Nauticast, AG, an Automatic Identification System (AIS) supplier in 2003.

ACR markets AIS under the GlobalWatch™ and GlobalWatch2™ brands. This year ACR announced an alliance with Maritime Information Systems AS MARIS (www.maris.no) to share proprietary software, engineering and manufacturing systems to more aggressively and effectively design, build and bring to market a suite of maritime information and safety electronics systems. The company will soon launch a suite of ACR-branded products, including Electronic Chart Display and Information Systems (ECDIS), a voyage data recorder and simplified voyage data recorder, electronic charts systems for maritime pilots and radar overlays to ECDIS.

In 2003 ACR also made tremendous inroads, according to Frank, into the outdoor equipment market with its introduction of two FCC-approved Personal Locator Beacons (PLB), which became available for the first time to millions of outdoor enthusiasts in the continental U.S. Through the growing popularity of PLBs, Frank sees "tremendous growth opportunities" for safety and survival equipment sales in the outdoor markets over the next few years.

While tapping into rich new potential markets, Frank and his management team greatly improved and enhanced operations, adding a state-of-the-art environmental lab, stringent quality control systems as well as many enhancements to production, which have led to considerable savings in time and in production manpower.

"Our potential is tremendous, limited only by the ability to develop and acquire high quality new products," said Frank. "I'm confident that our hard won reputation as a dependable manufacturer in the area of search and rescue technologies will increase our already strong brand identity and bolster our newest endeavors in the outdoor equipment and bridge information market segments."