Levitt took over as president after the recent departure of long-time president Dan Rose. She comes to NLT from its parent company, Levitt-Safety, where she has worked for the past 10 years.

One of Levitt's first actions was to hire Farmer.

"NLT has undergone significant growth in the past three years," she said.

"It became apparent that we needed to put in place the appropriate personnel and infrastructures to best deliver our products to the market."

Farmer brings extensive experience with high-tech products, namely with new product design and development, product management and with developing products to meet international standards and approvals.

Over the past nine months NLT has received intrinsic safety certification on several of its communication products. Now, for the first time in underground coal, a mine will be able to deploy a totally IS network to enable two-way messaging and tracking during an emergency, the company said.

NLT currently operates two divisions: the lighting division has been designing and manufacturing cap lamps and charging systems since 1983; and the digital division has been focused on designing networks and digital communication devices for the underground environment.

NLT has subsidiary offices in Australia and Chile and distributors around the world.