Synectics wins £1.4m of bus surveillance contracts for a UK regional authority

Synectics has secured contracts worth an aggregate £1.4 million to fit on-vehicle surveillance technology to 220 new buses being introduced by a UK regional authority, the AIM-listed group said in a regulatory announcement on 3 September.

The work goes to Ocular Integration, the systems integration business Synectics (AIM: SNX) describes as wholly owned. The contracts cover a combination of advanced camera technology, digital mirror systems and on-vehicle video surveillance across the fleet, which Synectics said is due to go into service this autumn.

Synectics did not name the customer, did not break the £1.4 million into equipment and services, and did not say over what period the revenue will be recognised.

The recurring revenue angle

The detail that matters most commercially is buried in the middle of the announcement. More than half of the 220 vehicles will also be connected to Synectics’ Transport Cloud Services, which the company said gives operators rapid access to video and operational data so that incidents, claims and disputes can be investigated and resolved more quickly.

That is a subscription attached to a hardware sale, and Synectics framed it that way. The deployment supports “the growth of higher-quality recurring revenues”, the announcement said, a characterisation from the company rather than a disclosed figure. Synectics did not say what the cloud element is worth annually or how long the connected vehicles are contracted for.

“This award demonstrates the growing demand for Ocular’s on-vehicle solutions and represents an important win as we continue to grow our position in the on-vehicle transport market,” said Amanda Larnder, chief executive of Synectics, in the announcement. She added that combining on-vehicle technology with connected cloud services lets the group “deliver greater value for customers while increasing the recurring revenue associated with our deployments”.

The stated purpose of the hardware is safety rather than security in the conventional sense: the announcement says the systems are designed to improve driver visibility, reduce blind spots and give comprehensive video coverage for passenger and road safety.

Checking the companies

Synectics plc is company number 01740011 on the Companies House register and was incorporated on 15 July 1983. Its registered office is Synectics House, 3-4 Broadfield Close, Sheffield S8 0XN, and its recorded nature of business is the activities of head offices. Its last accounts were made up to 30 November 2025, with the next set due by 31 May 2027.

Ocular Integration Limited is a separate registered company, number 05831231, incorporated on 30 May 2006 and registered at 3 Attenborough Lane, Chilwell, Nottingham NG9 5JN. Its recorded nature of business is security systems service activities. The register lists Synectics Plc, registration number 1740011, as its sole person with significant control, notified on 6 April 2016, holding 75% or more of both the shares and the voting rights. That is consistent with the announcement’s description of Ocular as wholly owned, though the 75%-or-more band recorded at Companies House does not by itself prove 100% ownership.

One point of confusion is worth flagging for anyone searching the register. A second company, Synectics Security Limited, number 05840789, was previously named Ocular Integration Limited and is registered at the Sheffield head office address. The trading business named in the announcement is the Nottingham-registered company.

As at 6 September the register showed Ocular Integration Limited’s accounts as overdue: accounts made up to 30 November 2025 were due by 31 August 2026, and the most recent set on file is made up to 30 November 2024. Companies House does not record a reason, and a late subsidiary filing says nothing on its own about the trading position described in the announcement.

Where this sits

This is a supply contract to a public sector fleet operator rather than a fundraise, so it tells the market about demand rather than about the balance sheet. The reason to pay attention to the cloud element is that a one-off equipment sale and an annual subscription are worth very different multiples, which is the point our explainer on ARR and MRR makes about how scaleup investors read revenue.

It also lands in a market where the UK hardware supply chain is under scrutiny. The government’s own count of the sector, covered in our report on the DSIT semiconductor study, found 703 UK chip companies and named scale-up capital as the binding constraint. Companies further up the stack, assembling and integrating that hardware into fleets, are the part of the chain that reaches a customer, and our guide to the UK scaleup funding ladder covers what growth at that stage normally costs to fund.