McMurdo
Portsmouth, England — a beacon name established in 1937, now under a Dutch owner most write-ups get wrong, and the closest thing ACR has to a peer.
McMurdo is the other name in satellite distress beacons — SmartFind EPIRBs, FastFind PLBs, AIS man-overboard devices, GMDSS radios — and the brand is dated to 1937 by its current owner. That owner is the part worth reading carefully. Seas Of Solutions, a Netherlands company, bought Orolia's maritime emergency brands in 2021; Safran then acquired Orolia in 2022, and Orolia's satellite search-and-rescue business went somewhere else again. The short version everyone repeats — that McMurdo is Safran-owned — is the one thing this page can tell you is not right.
- 1937The year Seas Of Solutions dates the McMurdo brand to
- 2021Seas Of Solutions acquired Orolia's maritime emergency brands
- 130+Countries reached by sales support, per Seas Of Solutions
What we'd reach for
- FastFind PLBThe personal locator beacon — pocket-sized, 406 MHz, no subscription, and registered to you by name.
- SmartFind EPIRBThe vessel beacon, float-free or manual, with a hydrostatic release that does the thinking if nobody can.
- SmartFind AIS MOBMan-overboard alerting to the vessels actually nearby — a different layer from the satellite alert.
- AIS SARTThe search-and-rescue transponder for survival craft.
- GMDSS handheld VHFThe compliance radio for commercial bridges.
- Kannad Marine beaconsThe sister brand under the same owner — worth knowing when comparing what looks like two independent options.
If you have read this site’s ACR page, you already know the argument for a 406 MHz beacon: it talks to a government-run satellite system, it needs no subscription, and it is the only distress device on a boat that works when everything else is gone. McMurdo is the other company that makes them, and a serious buyer should know both names.
The brand is dated to 1937 by its current owner, and McMurdo Ltd has long designed, built and serviced beacons in Portsmouth, England. What sits above it is where this gets interesting.
The ownership question, answered properly
Search for McMurdo’s owner and you will probably be told it’s Safran. That is the part we can tell you is wrong, and the correction is worth the paragraph.
Seas Of Solutions, a Netherlands company based in Zoetermeer, bought Orolia Maritime’s emergency readiness and response brands in 2021, setting up McMurdo Ltd and Netwave Systems underneath it. Safran then acquired Orolia in July 2022 — but by then the maritime beacon brands had already moved, and Orolia’s satellite search-and-rescue business went separately to Techno-Sciences. Three parties, two years, one brand name that kept selling beacons throughout.
We can establish that chain. We cannot establish which entity holds every individual McMurdo trademark and product line today, so we won’t pretend to — the same treatment Leica’s four-company muddle gets.
Why does an ownership footnote matter for a distress beacon? Because a beacon is a fifteen-year relationship. Batteries expire on a date. Hydrostatic release units expire on a date. Service means sending it somewhere. When a brand changes hands three times in three years, “who honors this and where do I send it” stops being a trivia question. Ask before you buy, and ask again at the first battery interval.
What it makes, and the thing everyone skips
FastFind personal locator beacons, SmartFind EPIRBs for vessels, AIS man-overboard devices, AIS SARTs for survival craft, and GMDSS handheld radios for commercial bridges. Sister brand Kannad Marine sits under the same owner — worth knowing if you think you’re comparing two independent options.
And the step that fails most often has nothing to do with the hardware: register the beacon. In the US that’s NOAA; other countries have their own authority. An unregistered beacon still transmits a position, but the rescue coordination center gets no name, no vessel, no emergency contact, and no way to rule out a false alert with a phone call. Registration is free, takes minutes, and needs updating when you sell the boat.
Against ACR, the honest answer is that these are peer products on the same satellite system, and the differences are availability, service network and which one your dealer actually stocks. The layers around them are the more interesting comparison: Orion’s flares for the last mile, Garmin’s inReach and Icom’s satellite PTT for two-way messaging — those are subscription services, and a beacon is not.
Where McMurdo fits
Offshore vessels. SmartFind EPIRBs with float-free brackets, where the alert has to happen whether or not anyone is conscious.
Individuals. FastFind PLBs for crew, kayakers, pilots and anyone whose worst day happens away from the boat.
Commercial bridges. GMDSS radios and SARTs, where the equipment list is written by a regulation.
Not for: anyone who wants to send messages. A beacon has one button and one meaning. Not for a buyer unwilling to check where their model gets serviced — see the ownership section.
Why we rate them
It is a genuine alternative in a two-name category. Distress beacons are too important for a monoculture, and McMurdo is why there isn’t one.
Portsmouth engineering with an eighty-eight-year name on it.
And we’d rather explain the ownership than repeat the shortcut. Getting “who owns McMurdo” right is a small thing that tells you exactly how carefully a source is working.
When the vessel is going down and someone has to know, we reach for McMurdo — or ACR, and we’ll say so.