Member Article

North East firm planning worldwide expansion

A North East fingerprint entry specialist has announced plans to create twenty new jobs in Newcastle upon Tyne and twenty-five more throughout the UK following a deal with Korea’s leading manufacturer of security terminals and the American producer of biometric imaging technology. UK Biometrics Ltd has entered into a three way partnership with Korean partner Keico Hightech Inc, manufacturers of high quality security terminals and New Mexico based Lumidigm Inc.

The deal will allow for the development and distribution of ‘Second Generation’ biometric readers with extremely low error rates. Lumidigm’s multispectral imaging technology simultaneously reads the surface and subsurface of fingerprints to capture clear, clean images every time, even when surface features are absent or hard to distinguish.

Matthew James, UK Biometrics Managing Director, said: “The combination of Keico terminals, Lumidigm imaging technology, our systems and software development capability mean we have a truly world beating product to further fuel our expansion. “This partnership will open up new markets in hostile industrial environments, hospitals and extremely high volume locations.”

Lumidigm biometric readers reduce error rates to less than one percent making them suitable for high security applications, even reading fingerprint through dirt or latex gloves. The readers are so robust they will operate in any weather conditions, can be power-hosed and even operate underwater.

Matthew James said: “We are a fast expanding business and increasingly coming to be noticed on the global stage. Our role models are Northern Rock and Sage, North East grown companies committed to remaining in the North East. Creating twenty jobs in the region is good news but we plan more than the creation of jobs. We want to start careers in this exciting, embryonic industry. Our plan is to make the North East a global hotspot in the biometric industry and this partnership will help us achieve that goal.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .