Leading the Survey Industry into the Future

Teledyne Odom Hydrographic located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA is a world leader in the development of high quality, single and multi-beam echo sounders and sound velocimeters for the Hydrographic Survey and Oceanographic Research markets.

 

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<- Stephen Apsey, general manager

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In May of 1982, the group which would eventually become Odom Hydrographic Systems, Inc. and ultimately Teledyne Odom Hydrographic began operations as the research and development division of Odom Offshore Surveys, Inc. In 1985, during the down turn in Gulf of Mexico offshore operations, Odom Hydrographic Systems was split from Odom Offshore Surveys and began life as an autonomous co-operation still owned by the Odom family. After this split, emphasis was redirected from radio positioning and offshore survey related equipment supply toward the development of echo sounding technology. Sales to outside customers rather than OOSI's operations department became the target of our marketing group. This change in focus resulted in the development of, among other products, early models of the Echotrac precision survey echo sounder, Echoscan multi-transducer ‘sweep' survey system and the Digitrace digitiser for analog echo sounders.

 

Changes

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Grant Jennings, director of sales and marketing ->

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In an industry where the longevity of companies is often measured in months rather than years, Odom Hydrographic Systems' second and third decades were interesting to say the least. These years included a short-lived merger with, and eventual buy-back from a much larger foreign company, the retirement of one of the founding principals, the acquisition by Teledyne Technologies, and the retirement of the second founding principal.

 

 

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<--  Michael Redmayne, technical sales - Europe, Middle East & Africa.

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In 2011, we have seen a lot of change at Teledyne Odom; Stephen Apsey took over as general manager, Grant Jennings moved over from Teledyne RDI as director of sales & marketing, Michael Redmayne joined us from the Naval Oceanographic Office, and we also invested in a number of new engineers to help with the development of new products. By investing in new people we are ready to take Teledyne Odom to new heights. In the first 6 months of 2011 we have seen a 20% increase in business over 2010.

 

New Markets

Single-beam echo sounder sales have continued to grow; in January we saw the release of the Hydrotrac II which after just five months has sold over 100 systems worldwide. The high accuracy, ease of use, and low cost has been a winning combination for our long term customer base. The new Deep Water echo sounder that we developed for a customer in India will see us move into full ocean depth measurements with features that are currently unavailable from other manufacturers.

 

Multi-beam sales have also seen a huge success with the ES3 system. The ES3 has allowed our single-beam customers to move into the multi-beam market at a fraction of the cost of the established multi-beam manufacturers. Over the next couple of years we intend to continue investing in this product line so that we can address a broader section of the market and also add peripheral products to reduce the time and cost of hydrographic surveys.

 

Sound Velocity Sensors have added the Digibar S to the product range. The new self-contained sensor allows sound velocity measurement down to depths of 500m with a simple USB connection for downloading the data.

 

Towards Tomorrow

With a new team on board and backing from Teledyne, Odom's growth path is going to be exciting over the next five years. Our goal is to introduce at least two new products per year to allow us to broaden our offerings and also see us move into new markets.