Well, here we are harping on about SEP’s Zone Guardian again (of course you know it’s far from the only product we make, but it is a big success story for us)…!
It seems so long ago now – probably because it is in fact quite some time – that in March 2018 we were approached by a company we hadn’t dealt with previously, in a country we had never sold to before. They were asking about Zone Guardian for a new hospital/medical centre being built in Dubai. The enquiry was strangely brief, to the extent that we weren’t quite sure if it was genuine, and so our response – although complete – was equally brief in nature.
What then ensued can only be described as an avalanche – of technical, installation option, company, and legal questions which resulted in the ongoing preparation and refinement of company and product presentations, technical briefings, diagrams and design work. Clearly the enquiry was quite genuine.
Because of the legal nature of agency and distribution agreements in the UAE, and the requirement for fire suppression products to be government approved, this then led into the exchange of myriad versions of legal agreements, more technical submissions and embassy visits.
It was only in May this year – over 14 months after the initial enquiry, that we were informed by our partner in Dubai that our Zone Guardian had been approved by not only the Dubai authorities, but also by the project in question.
After taking care of the final details, we are excited to announce that our first ever export outside of the EU (and our largest ever single shipment) was lifted in July!
For a relatively small company like ourselves, this is a massive achievement (and a massive learning exercise) and one of which we are quite proud. We are now working to use our experience of this project, and our recently achieved FM approval, to ensure that this was just the first of many global despatches.