A South Lakeland electronics company which marked its 60th anniversary in business this week is looking forward to the future with confidence, despite the difficulties facing the industry as a whole.

Oxley Developments has secured a series of major contracts in recent months in the face of strong competition, especially from the United States.

The Ulverston company, which has six decades of innovation under its belt, continues to be at the forefront of new technology in the electronics field.

Oxley won a 1.6 million dollar contract in July with the US Navy to supply its unique LED (Light Emitting Diode) system for use in the EA-6B Prowler reconnaissance aircraft, which has seen service in Afghanistan.

The LED system has 100 times the life of ordinary light bulbs and should last the lifetime of each aircraft.

Bosses believe the lighting system has great potential and have high hopes that the Prowler contract will be the first in a series of orders from the aerospace industry.

They plan to drum up business at Electronica, a major European electronics industry event being held in Munich in November.

The company, which employs 240 staff based at its head office at Priory Park, Ulverston, and two factories in Barrow, also won a contract to supply miniature shirt button-sized electronic tags for the British Army's new Bowman radio communication system

Bowman is the first major UK military equipment programme to use electronic tags to keep maintenance and service history records.

Around 250,000 e-tags, capable of holding up to 100 pages of A4 text, are being fitted to every item of the radio systems requiring servicing.

And Oxley also won a contract to upgrade the lighting system on Iceland's coastguard helicopter to bring it into line with new safety guidelines.

Iceland is the first country in Europe to upgrade using the Ulverston company's LED-based system.

Closer to home, an infra-red security lighting system developed by Oxley staff is being used by the DVLA to check car registration numbers are licensed.

So how did a company with such a rich technological background come to be based in Ulverston?

The firm's history can be traced back to the Second World War, when London was being blitzed by the Germans in 1942 and the government ordered the electronics industry - so vital to the war effort - to leave the capital.

Engineer and inventor Freddy Oxley headed north to Ulverston, initially based in a small factory in the

Square (now an Oxfam shop) before moving to Priory Park in the early 1950s.

Mr Oxley, a practical man with a head for business, went on to build a successful company based on the principals of innovation, quality and manufacturing excellence.

In many ways a man ahead of his time, he created one of the first 'clean' rooms by developing a system for sucking out air.

And by the late Fifties, he was trying to invent an electric car.

Today, the family name lives on through the firm, and his widow, Anne Oxley, is company chairman.

And while the business, like many others, was hit by the foot-and-mouth epidemic last year, the future looks bright, according to managing director Geoff Edwards.

"We have a very good order book and everything bodes well for the coming year.

We are looking to the future with good prospects," he told Business Gazette.

Oxley Developments held a low-key celebration to mark the company's 60th anniversary yesterday, in view of the closeness to September 11.

However, a bigger party is planned for Christmas when the company also hopes to celebrate securing its 200th patent for a new technical process.