Allam’s thumbs-up for Cobus’s fingerprint technology

Hull-based Allam Marine contacted communications company Cobus to help safeguard its £4.5m offices, using fingerprint technology, which has been devised by IEVO, a biometric manufacturer of fingerprint readers.

Michael Smith, of Cobus, said: “Cobus designed and installed the housing and fingerprint readers to accommodate this technology for Allam Marine’s property to sit alongside its ‘circle lock’ entrance.”

Under the circle lock system, members register their print when they join a business.

The print acts as the identification method, replacing the traditional identification card.

When the employee arrives at the office, they press their finger on to the reader, and this opens the first door of the Circlelock.

The Circlelock has two sliding doors, which create an interlocking security booth.

The ievo system has a vandal-resistant access control.

Hull-based Cobus employs 14 people, including engineers and sales staff.

Its current turnover is more than £1m, and this figure is expected to reach £1.5m by the end of the next financial year, as it secures more work.

According to Martin Conley, the IT manager at Allam Marine, the circle lock access at the company’s Melton site is one of the first of its kind in the UK.

Allam Marine, which is believed to be the largest independent manufacturer of generating sets in the UK, posted sales of more than £185m in its latest set of audited accounts.

The business was established in 1981 with sales of just under £3m.

It is now one Yorkshire’s fastest growing and most profitable privately owned firms. It recently recorded pre-tax profits of more than £22m.

Its diesel generators are used as back-up to mains supplies in large public and private buildings and manufacturing facilities in UK and Western Europe.

Its products are commonly used as a mains supply in countries with unreliable or non-existent power networks.

Over the past eight years the company and its founder and managing director, Dr Assem Allam, have won a host of industry and business awards.

In December 2012, Dr Allam was named Business Leader of the Year at the Variety’s Yorkshire Business Awards.