One of Australia’s most successful broadcast engineering companies has been sold.

Innes Corp, founded by John Innes in the 1970s, has been bought by British company Sonifex.

Innes, pictured above attending the funeral of his friend Chris Burnat today, told radioinfo that the deal was finalised last Friday and will take effect from next month.

For over thirty years Innes Corporation has been a leader in delivering a diverse range of quality radio and TV broadcast equipment for both the Australian and global market. Founded in 1977, by John Innes, Innes Corporation became a Proprietary Limited company in 1987.

Originally established to service both television and radio stations alike, the collapse of Channel 9 after the Bond ownership resulted in the banks taking ownership of the major channels. At this time, TV equipment sales almost disappeared and Innes Corporation turned its focus and expertise towards the radio industry.

Over time, Innes Corporation has built a solid reputation in the radio services industry, primarily focusing on antennas, transmitters, measuring instruments and program input equipment. Today, Innes Corporation continues to develop and manufacture program logging recorders for AM, FM and DAB+ bands, as well as professional sound cards, AM, FM and DAB+ radio tuner cards, and time zone delay systems.

In recent times Innes Corporation has significantly increased its international distribution network through Europe, the United States of America, Canada, South Africa and Asia.

Before establishing Innes Corporation, John Innes worked on HF and VHF transmitters until the advent of television in Australia in 1956, when he transferred his talents to the television broadcast industry. John then joined RCA, first as a field engineer then becoming Chief Engineer for the company.

Sonifex MD Marcus Brooke says his company has been involved with Innes Corporation for some time, recently acting as a manufacturer for their audio cards:

“I was so impressed with the quality and versatility of the audio cards that when we discussed further collaboration, we realised that there was a great opportunity for us to leverage our international marketing skills to sell the Innes PCIe cards to a larger market. In addition, we can combine our R&D departments to work in partnership on some interesting new products.

“Innes Corporation is a long standing and well-respected distributor of transmission equipment in Australia, known for their strong customer support, so in the future I’d hope to make use of their expertise to further improve sales of Sonifex equipment in Australia.”

For a list of transmission products supplied by Innes Corp, see the conpany website