Marine PV Technologies is a recently created spin-off company by the team behind the Multinational Educational Center UK (MEC) – a training and innovation think tank. The purpose of Marine PV, and its dedicated team, is to drive the development, market penetration and commercialisation of its flagship product – iLifebuoy.
The objective of our business project is to help save human lives by entering the aquatic lifesaving equipment market for lifebuoys. The recent growth of the shipping and leisure sailing (wider seafaring) industry has in turn increased the risks and number of Man Overboard (MOB) situations leading to drowning at sea and rivers. Expected product - ‘iLifebuoy’ is an autonomous robotized lifebuoy that eliminates the challenges associated with the traditional life saving devices. Like the St. Bernard dogs, iLifebuoy autonomously finds & reaches the person and provides them first support. The novelty - it is not a remote-controlled lifebuoy- it is a collaborative robot. iLifebuoy is a fully autonomous tracer, but it receives (video) input from a human. It uses three different built-in sensors (audio, video and sonar) to pin-point the location of MOB in water, then activates a powerful water jet propulsion to reach and provide support to the MOB within less than a minute! iLifebuoy further sends a MAYDAY signal to channel 16 and emits the GPS coordinates of the MOB. Marine PV Technologies was specifically spun off to develop and launch the iLifebuoy products. Its business strategy and team are structured to ensure the innovation’s successful market uptake. Our target groups are: A) watercrafts (incl. cruise ships, ferries, passenger ships, tourist boats, canal boats, yachts; B) coastal infrastructure open to the public (bars / restaurants located at a canal or right on the sea, pedestrian bridges). Our Primary market for product introduction will be A) watercrafts. Conservative estimates of the ‘addressable/obtainable market’ (only 6.3% of the total market) indicate potential demand for 1.3M units growing at a 5.7% YoY until 2024.
Based on very conservative assumptions for production and market penetration we expect to reach 2.03% of the ‘obtainable market’, create 87 new jobs and realise £27M of EBITDA by our 3rd year of trading. We project to break even after 1.5 years. The main objective of ‘iLifebuoy’ Phase 1 is to verify the technological, economic, legal and market viability of our innovation.
