In the framework of the production of radioactive alkali ion beams by the isotope separation on-line (ISOL) method in SPIRAL I, a surface ionization source has been developed at GANIL to produce singly-charged ions of Li, Na and K. This new source has been designed to work in the hostile environment whilst having a long lifetime. This new system of production has two ohmic heating components: the first for the target oven and the second for the ionizer. The latter, being in carbon, offers high reliability and competitive ionization efficiency. This surface ionization source has been tested on-line using a 48 Ca primary beam at 60.3 A MeV with an intensity of 0.14 pA. The ionization efficiencies obtained for Li, Na and K are significantly better than the theoretical values of the ionization probability per contact. The enhanced efficiency, due to the polarization of the ionizer, is shown to be very important also for short-lived isotopes. In the future, this source will be associated with the multicharged electron-cyclotron-resonance (ECR) ion source NANOGAN III for production of multicharged alkali ions in SPIRAL. The preliminary tests of the set up are also presented in this contribution.