Innovation Award for Defence SME

The specialist defence arm of UVS Pty Ltd, ATSA Defence Services, has taken out the Innovation Award at the annual HunterNet Chairman’s Awards celebrated on Friday 29 November in the historic Newcastle City Hall. The 2013 Chairman’s awards celebrated the achievements of HunterNet companies with a gala awards dinner attended by over 200 staff of member companies together with local dignitaries including Tim Owen MP and Sharon Claydon MP.

Accepting the award on behalf of UVS and ATSA was Jennylee Taylor, General Manager – Newcastle, who reflected on the journey that the companies had completed since partnering in 2011. Jennylee said that the two companies now effectively worked as one team across three sites with offices in Newcastle, Melbourne and Perth. She said that the passion of the group was for high tech electronics that was operated by demanding customers in harsh conditions including Defence and Offshore Oil & Gas. The specialised instruments, equipment and systems that ATSA and UVS supplied and serviced enabled customers to reliably complete projects in Australia’s marine and water environments.

Jennylee said that the journey of integrating and growing the two companies had been hard work in 2013 and she expected great results in 2014. She said that rather than be like a caveman that sat freezing, too frightened to light the fire, the ATSA/UVS team had grabbed the opportunity to excel in a tough environment. “Our people have a great deal of passion for their work “, said Jennylee, “and if passion equals fire then our blaze will be very bright indeed in 2014”. She acknowledged the vision of the owners, the Burrowes and Hodges families, who had been prepared to take a risk to grow ATSA from a highly-specialised niche Defence provider to join with UVS to service multiple markets nation-wide including Oceanographic, Hydrographic and Water Resources. Through representation of innovative products UVS was now also offering new capabilities to the infrastructure market in the Trenchless Technologies field. Jennylee thanked HunterNet for the award and accepted it on behalf of ATSA, UVS and the Newcastle team.