It’s time to take a deep dive into Subsea Propulsion Systems, the new business making waves around the world – all while proudly calling Watford home.
Launched in 2023 by Greg Hilliard and Richard Kelch, Subsea Propulsion involves hand-building high-quality diver propulsion vehicles, which are used for everything from underwater cave exploration to water safety programs. The business was born from the assets of a dormant business in Florida as well as the two divers’ love for underwater exploration.
Although recreational diving is usually down to 100 feet below the water surface, Subsea Propulsion scooters are built to withstand 300 feet and can operate for anywhere from two and a half to four hours. Although they are used for recreational diving, the high-quality nature of the scooters makes them best suited for water safety teams, sheriff departments and even the Army Corps of Engineers.
Each scooter is built by Hilliard, the owner of Fully Tek Mechanical, which is Subsea Propulsion’s home base in Watford. “Greg is incredibly technical,” says Kelch. “So he is already very hands-on. He's a diesel mechanic by trade and a master machinist.”
Kelch is the owner of Northgate Pharmacy and manages most of the customer service and business development for Subsea Propulsion.
Growing the business takes time, expertise and vision
Having purchased the contents of the shuttered diver-propulsion-vehicle business in Florida in the spring of 2023, the owners picked up and sorted through to see what they had and still needed. Although the owners were avid divers and were familiar with the scooters’ operations, the parts and pieces were incomplete – they had a lot of work to do.
“It took three to six months to sort of go through and figure out what we had,” says Hilliard. “We had to do what I call engineering archaeology, looking at stuff that's already built, taking it apart, figuring stuff out."
“We had never built one from the ground up,” adds Kelch. “There wasn’t enough stuff to build even one machine.”
With so many missing unknown parts, and a desire to produce new units of the highest quality, Hilliard and Kelch reached out to local businesses to help.
"We start by sourcing out within 100 kilometres of here because the one neat thing about Sarnia is there's a lot of mechanical prowess around here,” explains Kelch. “Everything from sourcing custom-sized O-rings to machining parts out of aluminum and plastic."
With no specs for many of the pieces needed to complete a scooter, Hilliard had to think out of the box. “I'll draw something on a napkin, design it, and then we farm that out to our different machine shops and suppliers and get it made."
Supporting divers where they need it most
By connecting with dealers and diving groups, orders come in regularly for the scooters, from Florida to Pennsylvania to as far away as Europe.
Many are undersea cave divers who need scooters built with batteries that have a long life, so they can reach far stretches of the caves and make it back with time to spare. Ground-water researchers in Florida and Mexico require these specialized scooters for exploration projects, some of which involve diving up to 10 kilometres through an underwater cave network.
Kelch explains, “When it pours rain in Tennessee and Georgia, 10 days later, the caves in Florida are like fire hoses. Like literally, you're grabbing on and pulling to get through the entrance."
“Cave diving in Mexico and Florida, that was what the previous brand was built around,” adds Hilliard. “That’s sort of a proving ground for them. We are also seeing a lot of growth around the St. Lawrence River, so anywhere there’s flow.” The St. Lawrence River has many shipwrecks for avid recreational divers who need a long-lasting scooter.
Kelch says that the Bruce Peninsula is also very popular for divers. “There are so many spots you can just jump in with a scooter, go for an hour-long dive, and see coastline no one else has. That whole escarpment continues underwater, so if you go up to the Tobermory area, and you look at where the trail is, and all the beautiful cliffs, they're underwater as well, and it’s quite cool."
Relying on local businesses and creating partnerships is key
In the short time the business has been building scooters, Subsea Propulsion has continually relied on the talents of amazing local businesses.
They have a three-step process for sourcing: Can it be sourced locally? Can it be sourced “kind of” locally? And is it a family-owned business?
"I go across the street to TH Industrial Supply, and I say, ‘Heidi, I need a thousand more of these,’ and two days later they’re here, so that’s a local and family-owned business,” says Hilliard.
Another local business, R.P.S. Industrial, has also been indispensable. Hilliard recalls, "We needed an obscure item. I walked in, and he literally said, ‘I don’t have it,’ but my supplier does. Then he called me a day later and delivered on a Saturday afternoon.”
And there are many more happy local and family-owned business stories like this: the scooter tubes are made at a family-owned business in Dunnellon, Florida; stickers come from Digital Ink Graphics & Printing; and shirts and hats are made by The Squirrely Nut.
Innovation is at the core of Subsea Propulsion
Everything is constantly moving in this fledgling business, reimagining how things were done by the former business in Florida and improving upon them.
“Our motor supplier did his graduate engineering grad school at McMaster,” says Kelch. “He’s based out of the States. But he actually made a point of coming here to meet us when we first opened so that we would have a handshake. He came to us with ideas about how he can make our product even better.”
Hilliard says that the new motor he’s working on “should be the most efficient machine in the world.”
“It’s all about taking an existing product and asking how we can make it better,” says Kelch. "We didn’t set out to make this a mass-production business…we’re working with customers who understand quality.”
A feature they’ve been working on is a phone app that gives a gas gauge reading on the scooter and another integration tool that allows divers to access data while they’re underwater on their scooter.
“Some of our competitors are already doing that,” says Kelch. “But sometimes too much information is overwhelming, so we’re trying to keep that really simple-use technology and use equipment that the diver already has."
Hilliard hand-builds each battery and is continually looking for ways to improve the materials to modernize the battery technology.
As if that wasn’t enough innovation for one new business, Hilliard is working on a new scooter model. “Customers are pushing us to do a mini – I actually have a mini that we're playing with right now because they don't need the two-to-four-hour run time."
As Subsea Propulsion continues to build its business building and maintain submersible scooters, it will continue to grow in quality and innovate the industry. But nothing would be possible without local and family-owned suppliers and a passion for thinking differently.
In doing so, they’re ensuring that each scooter is crafted with care and they are able to deliver unmatchable performance to adventure divers everywhere.
Learn more about this great local success story at www.subseapropulsion.com.
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