Hands On

“We are trying to build tourism as a new business,” Aerotech’s managing director Sam McCabe says.

With the Sky City group planning a $300 million refurbishment and expansion of its Adelaide Casino above the River Torrens, Aerotech has proposed establishing a helipad nearby, to take high-rollers on jaunts to the the Barossa Valley, Clare Valley and McLaren Vale wine regions, Kangaroo Island and other attractions within easy distance of the city.

In addition, the helicopter division recently landed a contract for mineral search in the remote Musgrave Ranges and McCabe sees prospects for servicing petroleum and mineral exploration companies, including BP’s proposed oil search in the Great Australian Bight.

But that’s for the future.

For now, Aerotech, with its staff of about 50 including more than 20 full-time pilots, has a solid – and complementary – workload for all its aircraft, as well as an engineering business which makes equipment to support and enhance its firefighting and agricultural roles, as it takes its annual revenue towards $20 million.

Aerotech was founded by Sam’s farming father, Bob, in 1985 as an aerial agribusiness in the fertile district of Tintinara in SA’s south-east region.

From small beginnings with one aircraft, it now claims to be Australia’s biggest aerial agriculture business, employing a fleet of 11 Air Tractor 802Fs, as well as an AT-602 and a 502.

About 50 per cent of the business remains agricultural flying, from bases in Tintinara, Hoyelton in SA’s mid-north, Arthurton on Yorke Peninsula and Cummins on Eyre Peninsula.

The business was expanded by the 2010 takeover of a crop spraying firm based in Cummins and the 2011 acquisition of another firm in Arthurton, giving Aerotech coverage of SA’s main cropping regions.

After this year’s heavy winter rains, heralding an exceptionally good season, the agricultural flying began in July, delivering a range of aerial spraying and spreading services, from liquid fungicides, herbicides and pesticides to solids such as superphosphate.

McCabe says the 802F is the world’s largest single-engine agricultural aircraft, capable of lifting 3,100 litres of liquid for broadacre spraying. The 602 has a payload of 2,400 litres.

At the end of the busy spraying season by November, the multirole Air Tractors are quickly prepared for the summer role of firefighting. The transition takes only two days.

Aerotech established its First Response firefighting division in 1990, and is the main contractor to SA’s Country Fire Service. It is an experienced proponent of the rapid initial attack approach.

The strategy, McCabe says, has been successfully adopted by country fire services around the nation, to try to control and extinguish fires quickly.

After sharing an airstrip for several years, the company has spent $1. 5 million this year establishing a new base near Woodside in the fire-prone Adelaide Hills, which will be ready for the 2016-17 fire season.

McCabe says the investment will ensure the company can meet the rapid response targets.

The new base, with bulk fuel and water supply, will accommodate seven water bombers and three helicopters, which will be on stand-by throughout the bushfire season. The aircraft aim to land, take on 3,000 litres of firefighting foam and be airborne again within three minutes.

In many cases, the first two bombers have dumped their initial loads on a fire within minutes of a report, usually beating the CFS ground crews to the scene.

Sometimes we get a blaze out before the crews arrive.

“Sometimes we get a blaze out before the crews arrive,” McCabe says, with some satisfaction.

Last summer Aerotech played a crucial role in fighting the devastating Pinery bushfire, north of Adelaide, where winds of up to 90km/h sent the fire front roaring through more than 85,000 hectares of farmland, destroying 87 houses and hundreds of livestock, and claiming two lives. The damage was estimated at $170 million.

With the fire out of control, Aerotech put 10 aircraft into the air, to help the CFS’s desperate attempts at containment. The firebombing made a difference, says McCabe, but it was “the worst fire I’ve ever seen”.

Aerotech and the CFS have “excellent” communications between ground control and aircraft, to coordinate the ground and air tasks, and ensure the fast and manoeuvrable bombers operate most effectively. McCabe says the 802Fs have an advanced, computerised ‘firegate’ to deliver their loads with great accuracy.

As well as its new Woodside facility, Aerotech has firefighting bases at Mount Gambier and Port Lincoln.

In addition to operating the aerial bombers, the company uses helicopters for firespotting and reconnaissance, and its 10-seat Cessna Caravan can be used for firespotting and transporting crews to fire scenes. It also stations a firespotting Cessna 182 aircraft at Naracoorte in the south-east.

Apart from its major firefighting role in SA, ahead of the bushfire season Aerotech also employs two helicopters on fire reduction work for the SA Department of Environment, conducting controlled burn-offs in conjunction with the CFS.

And this year, a water bomber has been based in the Northern Territory to assist in dry season firefighting.

However, McCabe does not envisage operating the First Response division beyond SA. “We have plenty of work here,” he says.

That does not mean Aerotech is standing still. McCabe’s wife Jessica, who also works in the company handling business development and media relations, is involved in discussions on helicopter tourism, including proposals for a helipad to serve Adelaide Casino clients.

Her husband, she says, is an ideas man who continually produces proposals for expanding Aerotech through new services and technologies.

At its engineering base in the company’s Tintinara homeland, the company has devised new loading and pumping systems, which have been adopted by the CFS, and the company is working on an undisclosed, but associated, innovation which has sales potential around Australia and overseas.

That aspect is being helped by the recent appointment of a business manager to run the administration in suburban Kent Town, freeing up time to develop the business.

Meanwhile, it has started negotiations for a new site at Adelaide’s Parafield Airport, where present hangar facilities and CASA-approved workshop have become inadequate for its fleet maintenance, which employs six aircraft engineers, and aircraft storage.

And the family-owned business keeps an eye out for further acquisitions to further diversify its operations.

As he searches for new fields to conquer, Sam McCabe sees plenty of scope for his recently-acquired helicopters beyond their integration into the firefighting fleet.

This includes offshore and outback petroleum and mineral exploration, where a start has been made, film air charter services and TV/film support. The company recently installed a $70,000 camera system from UAV Vision to offer another aerial service.

Then there’s the prospect of tourism, with the Adelaide Casino seen as a springboard for new business.

“There is work around,” says Sam McCabe, with typical enthusiasm. To improve the prospects, Aerotech is replacing one of the two AS350 BA Squirrels from the Australian Helicopters fleet with a second, more versatile and powerful B3 Squirrel, being acquired from Mexico.

The fourth helicopter is a Bell JetRanger, at present configured for the Channel 7 contract which was held by AHC but which – with Channels 7 and 9 combining forces on a single aircraft soon – Aerotech is not seeking to renew.

Much of the fixed-wing fleet is relatively young. “We’ll run the present fleet for the next two years,” McCabe says.

As the new bushfire season approaches, McCabe will be preparing to put his bombers and pilots on standby at Woodside. And he’ll be joining them as a standby pilot, for this family aviation affair is definitely a hands-on business.