Page 167 - Protec PR Book Volume 2

Protec’s Busy Season Boosts Growth
Dubai-based Protec already owns one
of the world’s largest event rental stocks that include the latest equipment in lighting, video, audio, rigging and trussing, scenic and staging, automation and SFX, conference equipment, robotics and motion tracking, and has once more invested heavily in new technology and equipment over a busy season in 2017.
The season has seen Protec at the core
of some truly exceptional events that has taken it all across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The year was kicked off by the multiple award-winning IDEX opening ceremony in Abu Dhabi, one of the season’s highlights. This is a unique and truly spectacular show that the company has produced since 2013 and seen live by almost 75,000 people and broadcast to millions of television viewers and that doesn’t include the enormous social media engagement across multiple platforms.
The next few months saw the company’s involvement in events of every kind – from conferences to concerts – and everything in between. The end of season’s highlight was another spectacular and enormous success in the form of the Dubai edition of Unite with Tomorrowland for which the company delivered the entire scenic and staging, lighting, audio, video, rigging, and backline. Having said that, Protec hasn’t actually had an end of season as what is normally a quiet summer, has turned out to be a very busy one with the company delivering events nonstop across the Middle East, Africa, and the Far East.
Meanwhile, on the back of this busy year, the company has recently made some exciting new investments again.
Peter Jones, Protec’s special projects head of department said, “We’ve recently invested in Notch – another exciting video graphics tool that has been designed to ease the process for interactive content and live visual effects. It’s a great visual effects engine for live events and what I also like about it is the fact that it integrates into all our existing systems like BlackTrax and our d3 Technologies servers for instance. From the way the events are being designed these days in the Middle East, I’m fairly sure
we are going to be using this system a lot.” Another interesting system that’s been added to Jones’ department is Bottoms Up. “The popularity of our robots has shot through the roof over the last year and having anticipated this trend we increased our stock which was a good move as we found out. While our robots have been used in many ways, I’ve found that the most popular is the bar service. So we have invested
in a clever system called Bottom’s Up which measures drinks portions with superb accuracy. What also helps is that it is very quick and there is no spillage. This is really going to help when we have larger numbers of guests lining up to get a drink from our robobars,” Jones added.
The company also strengthened its lighting and audio departments. Aaron Russ, Protec’s lighting head of department said, “We placed an order for 96 Robe Pointe and 48 Robe Spikie fixtures which are expected to be delivered in October. We have noticed that the Pointe is becoming more popular on tour riders so to cater for that demand we have ordered 96 fixtures. They are a great beam light but also crosses over into the spot category giving you a nice light weight (15kg), compact, multi purpose fixture.
The Spikie is a new release from Robe. It has a powerful LED light source with color mixing which is something a lot of beam fixtures lack. It is super lightweight, coming in at just under 8Kg and energy efficient with a peak power draw of 100W and being LED, it only uses the power it needs at that moment, unlike discharge fixtures that are at full load constantly. It also has a neat beam splitter to give a modern twist on the old school flower effect. I am really excited to get these things out on a show! Also on the list is
48 Claypaky Scenius Unico. These take all the good bits of the Mythos, Scenius Spot, and Scenius Profile and squash them all into one tidy package. The fixture is a true hybrid, operating as a beam, spot, profile, and wash light. Coupled with a 1400W Osram discharge lamp, they pack a huge amount of power. These have boosted our existing stock of Scenius Profile, that have proved so popular.
We can hardly keep them in the warehouse.” Russ also added the fact that the company has taken stock of six new MDG Atmosphere hazers that he said would eventually replace the company’s DF50 / MVS hazers.
Protec’s headquarters in Dubai