Hailing from Belgium, Paul Raymaekers has an engineering degree in electro-mechanics as well as a degree in industrial Management.
In 1986, he founded his own company specialising in laser applications, cutting, welding, engraving and, later, turning, milling and product development.
With an interest in rebreathers, and frustrated by the fact none of the units he was working with were simple enough to allow the user to set-up, dive and maintain, Paul set out to create a new rebreather; one easy to set up, with a limited number of possible failure points, and featuring a sleek design. In 2003 he built the first prototypes of the rEvo and spent the next 18-months gaining practical experience of the machine’s performance characteristics.
Working with Canadian company, Shearwater Research, an electronically controlled oxygen injection system was added to the unit in in mid-2008 and the first hybrid rEvo's (a combination of both mCCR and eCCR operation) were delivered to customers.
Lacking CE Approval, and therefore unable to sell units directly within the EU, Paul decided to develop a new rEvo that would be fully CE type approved. To facilitate this the decision was taken to install a complete rebreather testing laboratory - including the installation of a fully loaded ANSTI rebreather testing machine - in the Raytech company premises: a move that would allow research and development to take place in-house.
Completed at the end of 2008, the new installation gave rise to the rEvo III, the latest addition to the rEvo family of rebreathers. Toward the end of 2009 the rEvo III received CE approval for both manual and hybrid operation in both the 'standard' and 'mini' versions.
In 2011, rEvo launched a new monitoring system (rMS) (based on the digital DIVECAN platform) to make the whole electronic system cable fault tolerant. It offers full scrubber monitoring, and provides connections for any future development.
In 2018, Raytech and rEvo renewed its ISO certification to the most recent version, ISO 9001:2015, which specifically includes the production of rebreathers. At this moment, rEvo is recognised as a major player in the rebreather business, with over 50 instructor/dealers worldwide, and a continuously growing market share.
Paul sold rEvo to Mares in 2016 but continues to work within the company and heads up research and development. The development of the Mares HORIZON semi-closed rebreather has been his main work from 2016 till 2019.
