SCT majority shareholding capture leads to creation of EverFocus UK

EverFocus are to set up offices in the United Kingdom

EverFocus Electronics Corporation, a global top 20 professional security equipment manufacturer headquartered and listed in Taiwan, purchased a majority shareholding in UK value added distributor SCT to create the EverFocus UK subsidiary which opens its doors today.

EverFocus is in the process of building a global presence and already has offices established on both the west and east coasts of the USA, Japan, India, China and Germany, and has global sales in excess of $90 million.

EverFocus has purchased a majority shareholding in Security Consultancy and Technical Ltd (‘SCT'), which is a value added distributor of surveillance systems, access control and professional security equipment. SCT has built a strong reputation over more than 10 years of trading, for sourcing innovative security products from around the world and providing high quality service to support these products. SCT employs 14 people based in offices in Croydon and Telford and has served more than 19,000 customers including more than 2,000 trade and security installers, as well as retail and business to business operations.

The deal means the creation of EverFocus UK office, following initial investigation of the market through distributor relationships in the UK & Ireland. The new UK managing director of EverFocus UK, Basil Singh, will be tasked with building up and supporting the sales channel for EverFocus's full security portfolio as the CCTV manufacturer sets itself on a path of increasing its UK market share. The establishment of EverFocus's UK office follows a similar arrangement in India in February, which led to the creation of EverFocus India.

We see strong potential in the UK for our HD CCTV video camera - James Weng

James Weng, president of EverFocus Electronics Corporation, explained: "We see strong potential in the UK, notably for our new true High-Definition (HD) CCTV video camera and DVR all-in-one surveillance system which we are set to bring to the UK first, in the fourth quarter of this year. The UK is a mature CCTV market with low IP penetration to date and so we see strong potential for customers to move from their ageing CCTV cameras to True HD 1080i (interlaced) megapixel cameras while retaining their very heavy investment in coaxial cabling.

James Weng continued: "We don't see those hundreds of thousands of miles of coax being replaced with Ethernet cabling or fibre any time soon here in the UK. Our HD-CCTV system range offers customers access to the very highest quality of images, all transmitted via coax to a cost effective 8-channel DVR capable of storing 8 Terabytes of images at launch, rising to 12 TB in due course."

Basil Singh, the new managing director of EverFocus UK commented further: "EverFocus has been very sensible about ramping up in the UK following thorough investigation of the nature of the market which is fairly unique in its maturity. This maturity has created a problem in that we now have too many CCTV cameras out there delivering poor pictures which prevent the police and security teams from identifying individuals. EverFocus's all-in-one HD DVR-based solution will find favour because it offers users the benefits of HD not only in collection but also viewing of recorded video, all without making the difficult transition to IP and without scrapping existing coax cabling. We predict take-up amongst traditional installers will be strong when we introduce this to the UK market in the autumn."

As a result of the announcement, all SCT staff will immediately transfer over to EverFocus UK and at least four new staff will be hired across the two offices before year-end. No redundancies will be made.