History

We are the OEM of Portalevel and have been for over 20 years. We have supplied over 15,000 units to customers in 91 countries. In our niche field of non-invasive, portable and ultrasonic liquid level measurement, we are the world leaders. The business commenced with the development of a portable ultrasonic liquid level indicator for the UK Government Atomic Energy Research Laboratory at Harwell, and was undertaken by Mr Eric Charlton Hunter in 1987, who had previously worked at the Admiralty Research Laboratory and prior to that specialized in Sonar in the Royal Navy Submarine Service.

The work to establish a portable unit took over 3 years, and was accelerated both by users reluctance to continue to employ radioactive isotope technology because of licensing, transportation and storage restrictions, and by operators who had a personal disinclination to use radioactive technology. Coupled to this, in 1986 the Montreal Protocol was developed to control the use of CFC’s, and in that the company began to receive various UK and USA Government requests to aid their monitoring. Supported by some of the world’s largest fire and marine servicing companies, the 1st production unit was released in 1990.

Our customers are predominantly in the shipping, Defence, fire protection, offshore-petrochemical, rail and industrial sectors. We have supplied most of the world’s leading companies in these sectors and a core reference list is attached in the quotation for your ease of reference. At sea we have units aboard most types of vessels, including gas carriers, bulk carriers, oil tankers, chemical and product carriers, ferries and cruise ships. In defence we have equipped large amounts of the fleets of the US Navy, Royal Navy and various Commonwealth and European Navies. Offshore, we have equipped most of the North Sea’s 160 platforms in both the UK and Norwegian sectors. Most applications relate to operators needing to identify liquid gases in single-skinned holding containers or cylinders, and the unit negates the need for the system to be shut-down and the containing vessels dismantled and weighed. The limitations to the unit are that the gas or liquid being measured, must be in a liquid state, and contained in a single-skinned steel, stainless steel or aluminium holding vessel, with a wall thickness not exceeding 25mm. The unit is not designed to measure liquid levels on small hand-held containers or cylinders, which can be easily weighed.

We remain a family company, offer world-leading product support and a 3 year warranty. We have received various UK export and marine awards, including the Seatrade Safety at Sea Award. Today we manufacture a series of world-leading niche ultrasonic products, including Portascanner, a handheld watertight integrity test indicator for ships’s holds and hachcovers, and a variety of ultrasonic thickness gauges.