NKE (France)

Created in 1984 under the name of Micrel as a study in electronic desk, NKE has launched its first products for the oceanographic instrumentation in 1993. It splits from end of 2011 in three SME, one of these Nke Instrumentation is partner of the consortium NEXOS for the Ocean proposal for Tomorrow. Its main activity is to develop and manufacture oceanographic measuring instruments. NKE instrumentation activities overview:

  • Autonomous recorders for measuring in-situ in continental and marine waters: measure from 10 to 6000m depth parameters physico-chemical (Temperature, pressure, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, Fluorescence, pH) and more specific parameters (Force, Erosion slope,... fishing Effort)
  • Automated instrumented systems and networks for environmental monitoring: Marel measuring station, instrumented buoys (weather and oceano), Recopesca network on fishing vessels, instrumented system deep sea bottom.
  • Profilers and drifters to monitoring of the oceans: Profiler ARVOR Argo program. PROVOR for various scientific applications thanks to its high payload capability. (dissolved oxygen, acoustic,, bio-optical, nutriments ...), Carioca buoy accurate dissolved.fCO2 measurement
  • Sensors: optic and colorimetry (density, pCO2, pH – Alc), acoustic measurement chain, calibration activity .T, S.

 

NKE-instrumentation has a permanent team in R & D of 12 people, and also uses the resources of the NKE common design office (10 people). A workshop with 8 dedicated employees manufacture the NKE- instrumentation products.

The developments axes of NKE-instrumentation are the placing on the market of new sensors, the supply of buoys instrumented for offshore wind power and the development of profiling floats, specific and low cost.

To support its R & D internal, NKE instrumentation participates in several programs of research in collaboration with scientific bodies (Ifremer, CNRS...) and industrial. These projects often approved by the competitiveness clusters

In the project NEXOS, NKE will be involved to the chlorophyll and oxygen probes development for the Recopesca system and the integration of the different sensors as well as for the onboard sensor "Canoe". NKE may also contribute to the integration of passive acoustic instrumentation of PROVOR float.