lotron Corporation Merges With Varo, Inc.

Varo, Inc., Garland, Texas, has announced that it has signed an agreement in principle with lotron Corporation of Boston, Mass., providing for the merger of lotron with Varo.

lotron, located in Bedford, Mass., a Boston suburb, is a privately held, high technology company which was founded in 1969, and has developed and is manufacturing an integrated line of electronic navigation systems for oil tankers and other types of vessels.

Iotron's primary product is DIGIPLOT, a computerized collision avoidance radar system.

The system automatically acquires and continually plots the courses and relative positions of ships and other obstructions in a given area, and displays this information on the ship's bridge so that a course can be steered to avoid collisions. The recently enacted Port Safety and Tank Vessel Safety Act empowers the Secretary of Transportation to issue regulations requiring collision avoidance radar systems to be installed on all tankers and large vessels utilizing U.S.

waters. Two hundred sixty-seven DIGIPLOTS have been sold, which is approximately 40 percent of all such systems sold to date.

Other lotron products include DIGINAV, a computerized integrated navigation system which automates all navigation functions, including fixing the DIGIPILOT, an automatic steering system which minimizes fuel consumption.

DIGIDATA, an optional recorder, can be attached to the system to continuously record all navigation data for later analysis.

lotron sales for its fiscal year ended April 30, 1978 were approximately $5.4 million.

Headquartered in Garland, Texas, a Dallas suburb, Varo manufactures military night vision viewing systems, high voltage rectifiers and multipliers used in consumer and industrial electronic products, frequency control devices for the U.S. Navy, and marine searchlights. Varo sales for its fiscal year ended April 30, 1978 were approximately $79 million. Varo common shares are traded on both the New York and American Stock Exchanges.

Other stories from December 1978 issue

Content

Maritime Reporter

First published in 1881 Maritime Reporter is the world's largest audited circulation publication serving the global maritime industry.