Scott Harrigan, a 25-year navy veteran, has used his military experience to create a safer line of ropes, buoys and life preservers.
Harrigan’s company, GLOrope Safety Solutions Inc., manufactures a range of glow in the dark safety products that were born from his own lived experiences in the Royal Canadian Navy, during which he was deployed in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Haiti.
“These kinds of ideas have been floating around for a long time in the Navy,” said Harrigan. “We do a lot of operations at night, and we’ve always been trying to mitigate the problems of operating a warship at night… One of the problems is we could never find the life rings after we did nighttime man over boards.”
One solution floated frequently by Harrigan and his peers were using glow in the dark products, but Harrigan said most glow in the dark equipment was cheap and did not meet the standards required for naval operations.
“We were wondering — what are the limitations of glow in the dark? How bright can it be? How long can it last?” said Harrigan. “When I finished my 25 years, I was only 45 years old, and I knew I had an entire second career to give here.”
GLOrope did not start off in Harrigan’s hands, but a U.S. Marines veteran who already had the same idea. The two became fast friends, and before long Harrigan bought the Canadian “franchise” of the company for $1.
“He set me up with a website and I took the idea to the Halifax Boat Show, and the response was just overwhelming,” said Harrigan. “Originally when I started with him, he was doing a lot of camping stuff and a lot of pet stuff, but I really saw the potential in marine stuff.”
Learning the tricks of the trade from his business partner, Harrigan used the GLOrope methodology to begin crafting buoys, life rings, paracords and rope to service the marine industry. Harrigan’s life ring design has now been certified in Canada, and he is now pursuing U.S. certification, as well. The process leading up to becoming certified, however, involved a lot of trial and error.
“We’re really breaking some ground here,” said Harrigan. “There’s really no one else in the industrial glow in the dark sector. We have nothing to compare a lot of the stuff that we’re doing to, so it’s a lot of trial and error. We’re going through it right now. With the life ring, it was getting it white enough, because with Transport Canada, the life rings have to be white or orange, and it was coming out to lemon-lime coloured because of the pigment. So, we had to find a new formula to get a yes from Transport Canada.”
GLOrope’s products are designed and manufactured in Harrigan’s home province of New Brunswick, with their rope being made in a 10,000-square-foot facility in his hometown of Dalhousie, New Brunswick, while a company in Tracadie, N.B. produces between 30–40 GLOrope products in their facility.
In the long-term, Harrigan would like to see all of his products manufactured in-house or putting these facilities squarely under the GLOrope umbrella.
“We’re slowly trying to bring this in-house as much as we can,” said Harrigan. “I just brought on some investors from the west coast, and we’re actually discussing maybe investing in the rotomolding company in Tracadie just to solidify that relationship… I lost a couple of my rope manufacturers during COVID and I said if I don’t start bringing this in-house, I’d lose everybody.”
Fostering the growth of his business in his hometown is not only important for Harrigan, but for Dalhousie, which he said has seen many industries dry up or move to larger centres.
“Dalhousie just lost a paper mill. We also lost a power plant and a chemical plant and a smelter in the last 10 years, so this town has been hit hard,” said Harrigan.
With full safety certification coming in the near future for his products, Harrigan has set his sights high for GLOrope’s future endeavours.
“I want to get these on every ship in the world. Everyone who sees it, gets it, and the overwhelming response is, ‘How has this not been invented yet?’” said Harrigan. “Our goal is to jump through the hoops until we get certification from the IMO (International Maritime Organization) and be able to sell this to every cargo ship, every ferry, every navy around the world.”
