SINCE Poseidon Sea Pilots was awarded the contract to provide pilotage services at Brisbane, there has been a buzz about the outfit.

Poseidon Sea Pilots director Steve Pelecanos said Poseidon has ambitions beyond Brisbane.

“We’ll certainly take time to bed ourselves down here [in Brisbane] to demonstrate to the world what we can do, but we’ve certainly got our eye on other jurisdictions both in this country and overseas and we will be expanding,” he said.

Mr Pelecanos said they had been inundated with applications since then.

“Since we found out that we were awarded the contract, the port of Brisbane, we’ve been absolutely overwhelmed with applicants looking for employment with us,” he said.

“I must say that we are absolutely astounded by the high calibre of applicants.”

Poseidon is part of Australian Maritime Systems Group, which specialises in various maritime, defence and aviation services.

AMS Group chair John Sugarman said AMS Group has 20 years of experience in maritime safety.

“We have been a contractor into the major maritime areas in Australia and overseas, working for governments and port authorities,” he said.

“Our vessel traffic management systems are world-class. We’ve looked around the world, we’ve found the best technology and we’ve brought it to Australia, and we put it in the biggest ports in Australia.”

Mr Sugarman said the core of AMS Group is safety.

“What we have done is looked at technology and how best that can make this safety efficient and improve maritime safety,” he said.

We’ve had a long, long history of doing that here in Australia and overseas, and the pilotage is just the next level for us to be involved in.”