Business Rural Winter 2021

84 | Business as usual as RURAL SERVICES » Marlborough Helicopters Virginia Wright Marlborough Helicopters runs three Bell 206 helicopters with around 90 per cent of their work involving things like weed-spraying and land development for their predominantly high-country farmers. I n April of this year Simon and Simone Moar, and Simon and Julia Cooke, took ownership of Marl- borough Helicopter 2021 Limited. The two Simons have both been flying for the company for nine and eleven years respectively, but the operation has a considerably longer history than that. “My understanding is that it’s one of the longest standing Ag companies in the country,” says Simon Moar. “We celebrated our 40th anniversary a couple of weeks ago, but we have heard that the company was around for eight years before that in one form or another.” The recent transfer of ownership makes the Moars and the Cookes the third owners in 40 years, the previous owners also having bought the com- pany after working in it for many years. “It started in its present form with John Sinclair, Colin Bint and a consortium of farmers around the Marlborough region, then in 2006 Owen Dodson and Greg Price and their wives bought it and 15 years later sold it to us.” Greg had been the company’s ground crew and mechanic for 20 years. Owen learnt to fly with the company in the 90’s and is still flying for the new owners so it’s been part of his life for over 30 years. John Sinclair’s association, as one of the original owners, is even longer. “He’s still part of the busi- ness believe it or not,” says Simon. “He’s our main- tenance controller so when CAA did our entry audit for the 2021 company they said they’d never come across a company before with three generations still involved in it.” The company’s original mandate to provide sup- port for the rural community throughout Marlbor- ough remains the same. They now run three Bell 206 helicopters with around 90 per cent of their work involving things like weed-spraying and land development for their predominantly high-country farmers, and five to ten per cent for the more inten- sive farming in the Rai Valley. There’s also Search and Rescue and load-lifting into inaccessible places, but whatever they’re doing there’s one constant. “We pride ourselves on using some pretty good technology,” says Simon. “We use hydraulic driven equipment which gives us really good reliability and improved performance because of it. We’re not relying on petrol-engines on our spreaders and spray-gear so we don’t tend to have any issues with broken pumps and motors and so on.” It’s their use of Through Valve Booms (TVB’s) that also sets their company apart from most others, as Simon explains. “There’s only one other company north of Auckland that uses them but they’re a spe- cialist really low-drift spraying system. Back in the 90’s with the development of grape growing around Marlborough John Sinclair recognized the risk of fine-droplet sprays behaving like mist, and drifting over the fence onto someone else’s crop. The TVB system disperses droplets that fall like rain, so they land where you want them to.” Like the Bell helicoptors they use their equipment is carefully chosen to match their core business needs. “Nowadays everyone wants to see bigger, better, faster, stronger equipment like the AS350 Squirrels but we actually find the smaller 206’s, which are a turbine helicopter with all the safety features,are a good size for a lot of our work, which is often smaller jobs like carrying a small load or passenger transport with two or three people.” As far as the new owners of Marlborough Heli- copter 2021 are concerned the sign of a successful business change-over is that the customers see no difference. “They can ring up and still expect to get the same service with the same pilot turning up, and the knowledge and the relationship that goes with it so it’s pretty seamless,” explains Simon. “We’re enjoying having control over how much work we take on but not much else has changed, it’s mainly been just tweaking systems to reduce the paperwork and start using more online technol- ogy.” Using an on-line SMS data base and the on-line helicopter maintenance platform “Flight-Cert” sys- tem streamlines keeping track of their hours and makes planning ahead easy for things like services and machine maintenance. “We did it all before but it was all on paper and not as easy to visualise it as it is now with all the parts, and inspections all on one page showing you what’s coming up next. It’s the same with ‘Go-Nogo’, it stores all our safety information in one place so that it’s less work for us ultimately.” The business has always been owned with a family-type structure, and the Moars and the Cooke’s run it along the same lines as the two couples before them. “Greg’s wife Wendy used to do all the accounts and things like that, and now my wife Simone does the accounts,”says Simon, “and Owen’s wife Kelly remains our Safety Manager while she trains Julia up to do the role. So it’s always had that tight-knit family feel and there’s a real history there which we like and we’ll keep going.” The team at Independent Tyre Specialists are proud to support Marlborough Helicopters. We have served customers across Marlborough for more than 60 years. When it comes to tyres ITS does it all, nothing is too big or small. ITStyres.- Proud to Support Marlborough Helicopters 10 Horton Street, Blenheim P: 03 578 9239 M: 021 954 274 E: parts@automarine.co.nz SALES • MAINTENANCE • SERVICE Proudly supporting Marlborough Helicopters 1 Marchwood Park Rd, Motueka 03 528 6679 | office@argusaviation.co.nz 20 Trevor Crescent, Blenheim 03 578 8371 Greenbank Engineering is proud to be associated with Marlborough Helicopters, for all their stainless steel fabrication and repairs Greenbank Engineering