About Us
Bringing Personal Locator Beacons for Hire & Sale to New Zealand
The Southland Locator Beacon Charitable Trust was formed by a group of people who saw an urgent need for a personal locator beacon hire service for the thousands of people each year who enjoy our great outdoors here in New Zealand. We believed that the simple act of carrying a PLB would help save the lives of people who become lost or injured in remote areas by enabling emergency services to locate and rescue them quickly and efficiently.
We are a New Zealand Based Emergency Personal Locator Beacon Charitable Company
We are the first company to be accepted by Search and Rescue as the 'Standard' to achieve when supplying emergency personal locator beacons (PLB)
We have been helping to take the search out of search and rescue Since 1996, We work to educate everyone about safe outdoor adventure practices and the importance of carrying a personal locator beacon (PLB), We have over 89 hire outlets with over 600 highly rated ACR Personal Locater Beacons (PLB), We also offer the cheapest possible prices for the purchase of personal locator beacons
Personal locator beacons are sold and hired out by Southland Locator Beacon Charitable Company
We have played a part in rescue of over 600 people throughout New Zealand,
John Munro's contribution to the process in rescuing people has been recognized with
A police award, Volunteer of the Year,
A plaque presented by The Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand (RCCNZ).
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“New Zealand has one of the highest rates of volunteer SAR involvement in the world.
Volunteers make up 95% of the people who provide the operational SAR response.”
Main objectives for Emergency Locator Beacon hire service:
To save lives and rescue those who became lost or injured
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To save millions of dollars in search and rescue costs, and put less people at risk when out searching for the lost and overdue.
When you hire a locator beacon from us, we don’t forget you. We monitor our data base every day. If you don’t return when you say that you will on the hire form, we will start looking for you!
By hiring out personal locator beacons we have been able to reduce the search team from as many as 50 or more volunteers and several helicopters down to one helicopter and a crew of three.
First company accepted by Search & Rescue as the Standard to achieve
when supplying such a service.
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ACR PLBs available for hire throughout New Zealand
Since its inception in 1996 we have expanded to over 89 outlets throughout New Zealand with over 600 units of the latest ACR ResQLink GPS Locator Beacons available for hire. In the last 4 years alone we have rescued over 100 people.
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Our network of PLB hire outlets
We offer the same service and price from one end of the country to the other. The administration team look after and log all hires, returns and field enquiries from our outlets and website. The Database is monitored 24/7 and in the event of a beacon being activated, we can supply important information about the hire to the search and rescue authorities within minutes of the emergency signal being received by them
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ACR ResQLink GPS Locator Beacons for a focused search and rescue
ALL our Personal Locator Beacons are equipped with a built in GPS chip, when they are activated, they search the skies for satellites to obtain a GPS fix and then send that information onto the Search and Rescue authorities. This narrows down the search area to a few square metres. That information is then relayed to the searching helicopter so they can fly directly to where the beacon is transmitting. It also has a built in strobe light to aid searching aircraft to 'home in' on the beacons location. These strobe lights can be seen for up to 15 kilometres away!
About John Munro
John has been with the trust since its beginnings in 1996 and also its chairman since it was a year old, right up until he transferred to the company and is now the chairman of that. He worked alongside the developers during the final testing stages and has been heavily involved in the development of its management plans and how the whole system works.
John has over 20 years experience working in the PLB hire industry
He has been instrumental in perfecting the systems and back-end management of the hire process.
When he started working with the trust, it was the first in New Zealand to make Locator Beacons available to the public for hire, and to this day, is the largest supplier of rental beacons throughout New Zealand. John spent many hours in the early years, building up awareness, starting more outlets, working with Search and Rescue and speaking at meetings to get the word out there that finally, people could afford to take a locator beacon with them and know that they would be looked for if something went wrong, or they became overdue.
Over the years John has been awarded the medal for the year of the volunteer which was presented to him by the New Zealand Police, and in 2012 was given a plaque from the National Rescue Coordination Centre in recognition for services to the industry by way of helping in the process of rescuing people and making their lives safer while out in the wilds of New Zealand.
He continues to work closely within the industry as a whole and is the managers of the Administration team that records and monitors all hires and enquiries. He loves his work and looks forward to what the future holds... Don’t be surprised if it is John who answers the phone or your email when you get in touch!