Asian distributors from global leading company Chemring Marine are offering safe disposal facilities for outdated marine distress signals and helping prevent the spread of counterfeit products.
Respected distributor Moloobhoy is pioneering the establishment of a professional disposal facility in India to remove dangerous, old marine distress signals.
Chemring Marine’s managing director, Robert Hill, who met with Moloobhoy in India last month, says, “Old marine distress signals are salvaged from ships and liferafts and are somehow relabelled with new dating. This is not only illegal, but seriously dangerous and in extreme cases, it could kill someone. Unfortunately, these problems are very common in many countries.”
Moloobhoy is more than 100 years old and is still growing. It has the largest market share in the sale and supply of marine distress signals and represents Chemring Marine’s world-leading Pains Wessex brand in India.
Singapore distributor WH Brennan is providing a pioneering disposal service for marine distress signals and batteries. The vital service – believed to be the only one in Singapore – ensures that out-of-date flares and lithium batteries are safely disposed.
Ramli Yusoff, manager of the marine safety division, says, “As pyros and lithium batteries are controlled and hazardous items and classed as dangerous goods, it is imperative that they be disposed of properly. This is to prevent any accidents that may result in loss of limbs and life if they are disposed of as and treated like normal garbage.”
Chemring Marine, the world’s leading supplier of SOLAS, MED and USCG-approved marine distress signals to the commercial and leisure marine markets, has been at the forefront of campaigning for improved global marine safety regulations, including introducing standardised rules on replacing dated safety products.
It also supports the European Marine Safety Agency in its bid to get legislation passed to tighten Marine Equipment Directive policing and prevent sub-standard and counterfeit products entering the market.
Mr Hill says, “Industry opinion is that non-EU manufacturers are often shipping substandard product, which should be prevented from sale, but in practice product quality is often not monitored and the products in question are often copies of accredited EU manufacturers.”