Q&A: Paul Johnson, President and CEO of Sniffex, Inc.

(From Access Intelligence - Terror Response Technology Report)

Byline: MATTHEW FORDAHL

Sniffex, Inc. [SNFX], a year-old firm that has a license to sell a hand- size, 1.3 pound explosive and weapons detection device developed, and currently produced in Bulgaria, has been finding a toe-hold for the product in Asia and the Middle East and is steadily finding interest elsewhere.

So far Sniffex has sold 70 of the devices, which are called Sniffex, for what Paul Johnson, the company's president and CEO, says are "seed orders." Most of the sales are to Sniffex representatives in Asia and the Middle East who in turn are selling the units to police, security and defense forces in countries in those regions. The company has sold a couple units to the U.S. Navy for testing.

Sniffex does stand-off detection from 10 to 300 feet and is unlike more conventional portable detection devices which "sniff" the air next to a suspect target to find traces of explosives. Instead, Sniffex comes with an antenna, similar to one you might see on a portable radio, which points toward where explosives may be hidden while an operator walks around an area with the device. Based on the interference between the magnetic field of the earth, the explosive and the device, Sniffex consists of a generator that emits a signal that activates the electrons of nitro-based materials of a potential target, which in turn emits a signal that can be picked up by the detector on the device. Sniffex, based in Irving, Texas, went public back in May. Start up funding of $500,000 came from TASC International Ltd., the Bulgarian manufacturer of Sniffex. TASC has exclusive rights to sell the device in the European Union and Sniffex has exclusive rights in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. Elsewhere Sniffex has non-exclusive distribution rights. Earlier this month Sniffex signed a representative agreement with a marketing agent in China, a new market for the company.

TR2: Hasn't the Sniffex device been around for a while? What's new about it under your company? Johnson: Why don't we start at the beginning of time as I know it. Yuri Markov, a European engineer and the inventor, worked on the product at least three or four years prior to any of it being sold.…