EOS Completes Tucson Facility Upgrade

Electro Optic Systems Holdings Limited (EOS), developer of products that incorporate advanced electro-optic technologies for the aerospace market, has completed the upgrade of its Tucson, Ariz. facility for a new scalable and flexible production capacity in the US.

Recognizing the increasing importance of its US production base, EOS has invested to consolidate, expand and extensively upgrade its US facility. The facility for production and support of remote weapon systems is designed to provide production that is scalable from 10 production units per week to 75 units per week, and to produce each member of the EOS weapon system family.

The expanded Tucson plant enables US-based production for future military contracts expected to be in US dollars and to minimize the effects of an appreciating Australian dollar against the US dollar.

"EOS has now completed the consolidation in Tucson of all its US-based weapon system production, including the large capacity acquired in November 2009 from Recon Optical Inc. The consolidation by itself will lead to improvements in production efficiency, and the new plant and technology we have injected will add to this," said Hugo Keyner, CEO of EOS’ Arizona subsidiary, EOS Technologies Inc. "A new element will be the flexibility of the plant to scale up or down as needed to meet production targets. An emerging trend in defense business is the use of short-term appropriations to fund long term procurements, resulting in stop-start funding and, until now, sharp reductions in the overall efficiency of delivering program outcomes. For the first time EOS will be able to surge production volume over a wide range, and be price-competitive at any point in that range."

"This new facility also allows EOS to meet any future production requirement for the US Army CROWS program, which specifies production rates of up to 75 units per week. New technology means that the large capacity has not been achieved by degrading the plant's competitiveness at lower volumes," said Ben Greene, CEO of EOS. "The expansion of the US production facility does not signal any reduction in Australian operations. The Australian plants continue to manufacture and service remote weapon systems for strong growth markets in Asia, Europe and the Middle East as well as meeting the needs of the Australian Defense Force."

For more information, visit: www.eos-aus.com