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While many of us are aware of Israeli innovations in various technologies, most of those innovations are deployed “behind the scenes” by multinational manufacturers, with Israeli technology making products work faster, better, and more efficiently. But Israel also makes consumer products, the kind of things you would expect to be made in China these days. To compete with low Chinese manufacturing costs, those products have to be top of the line. And, it turns out, Israel's Morel makes some of the highest-rated audio speakers in the world!

Morel, established in 1975, designs and makes its audio speakers for homes, cars, and businesses in its Ness Ziona design and manufacturing center. Meir Mordechai, whose family made aliyah from Iran over 60 years ago (when he was just six), began the company, he said in a recent interview, because he loved music – and because it was just too expensive to import components for speakers in the 1970s, because of the import duties. Instead, Mordechai said, he concentrated on building quality speakers using parts and components that he could get his hands on in Israel. The design worked, and the company started selling speakers locally, then internationally – to the rave of critics and customers, who are in love with the quality Morel speakers, and their overall reasonable prices (check out what customers on Amazon have to say about Morel products).

In a couple of weeks, Morel, along with thousands of other consumer manufacturers and merchants, will set up shop in Las Vegas, for the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Tens of thousands of innovative products are presented at that show, so when a product is singled out for its quality or innovation, it's a big deal. Products entered in this prestigious program are judged by a preeminent panel of independent industrial designers, engineers and members of the media to honor outstanding design and engineering in cutting edge consumer electronics products across 32 product categories.

And last month, Morel was named an International CES Innovations 2012 Design and Engineering Awards Honoree for its new Supremo 602 2-way car audio component system. We won't go into the technical “impedance” and “frequency response” figures, but suffice to say that the Supremo speakers are considered top of the line (and are priced accordingly, although the company has many offerings much more modestly priced). But being nominated as a top CES product is actually something to crow about. “It is an honor to be recognized by the CEA as an Honoree in the CES Innovations 2012 Design and Engineering Awards for our latest car audio flagship, the Supremo 602,” says Nir Paz, director of sales and marketing at Morel, adding that “the new Supremo 602 is the finest example of Morel’s passion and commitment to audio excellence, and it reinforces our position as a high-end car audio speaker manufacturer.”