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New name and direction for Thales

Thales Advanced Engineering has adopted a new business strategy and new image, and the company name has changed to Protoclea, trading as Protoclea Advanced Image Engineering.

There are two major reasons for doing this, explains managing director Dr Bennie Coetzer. Firstly, the company has over the past five years been confused with another 'Thales', a French company, which had a contract from the South African Government to construct combat suites for four corvettes being built in Germany.

"Thales Advanced Engineering was formed and registered in South Africa in 1987 and also operates in the defence industry," he says. "The French Thales, which used to be known as Thomson-CSF, elected to change its name to Thales in December 2000. While we have the rights to the name in South Africa, the French Court did not support our rights in France. In short, to put an end to the confusion of the two companies here in South Africa, we decided it would better suit our long-term interests to change our name."

Secondly, the company is re-positioning itself in the marketplace because of its strategic decision to re-focus the business as a developer, manufacturer and supplier of a select range of both local and imported products for advanced CCTV surveillance and security solutions as well as a variety of advanced image engineering applications.

"In the past we supplied complete solutions, now we are supplying the products individually as well as offering the total systems," Coetzer says.

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