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Acasta flies into chopper market
Former Great Slave Helicopters owner comes out of retirement

Shane Magee
Northern News Services
Friday, April 8, 2016

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The Acasta Heliflight office and hangar is quiet as the president of the new entry into the helicopter business gives a tour.

NNSL photo/graphic

Adam Bembridge, president of Acasta HeliFlight, in the company's shared hanger Monday with one of its helicopters. - Shane Magee/NNSL photo

Pilots are down south for training. A helicopter is expected to be delivered shortly, joining the three already in the hanger where several employees are working. A two and a half week caribou monitoring contract has wrapped up and the company awaits word on a mining-related contract.

"We're very happy with the results to date," Adam Bembridge said in an interview in the upstairs Archibald Street office shared with Adlair Aviation.

Bembridge offers a candid view of the market made tight by tough economic times and competitive by the company he once owned - Great Slave Helicopters.

"We're certainly not any more insulated from the economic environment than anyone else but we have no debt on our balance sheet and we're very well capitalized," he said.

The core fleet will be six at the start, with 13 employees.

Acasta hired several people from Great Slave, something Bembridge said was a sensitive issue because at the time his former employer had been operating with reduced hours and there had been layoffs.

"There were a key group of individuals looking for another opportunity," he said.

The company plans to work in areas such as oil and gas, mineral exploration, forest fire suppression and power line construction in the Western Arctic and

Nunavut, he said.

Acasta is launching in a period of shrinking mineral exploration and a virtually non-existent oil and gas sector, a factor Bembridge acknowledges. However, he sees some of those markets turning around in the coming years.

"We believe we will face headwinds in the general market but it'll also be competitive, so I could see it as large as 20 to 25 machines within five years," he said of his company's growth plans.

Bembridge said he wants to run a lean operation to keep costs low, including not purchasing company vehicles or crew housing.

"A lot of the heartburn created by the high cost of infrastructure, we don't have," he said.

The company is a subsidiary of HNZ Group Inc., an Edmonton headquartered company operating in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Norway, Southeast Asia and Antarctica with more than 120 helicopters. Acasta employees have access to HNZ's benefits packages, which he believes will help recruitment and retention.

Bembridge has experience getting a helicopter company off the ground. He was the second employee at Great Slave Helicopters and worked there for three decades.

Bembridge and Ian Campbell, then-owners of Great Slave, sold their interest to Discovery Air Inc. in June 2006, a deal said to be worth $120 million in cash and stock. Bembridge bought enough stock to become a major shareholder in the airline, Yellowknifer reported at the time.

Since that deal, Discovery Air's stock price has dropped by almost 99 per cent.

"We viewed the shares as a lottery ticket and like most lottery tickets, they didn't yield what we had once hoped, so I completely sold my Discovery Air holdings in the last 12 months," he said.

On March 30, Discovery announced it had taken out a line of credit worth $12 million with Clairvest Group Inc., with a 12 per cent interest rate. A news release from the company states it will be used to finance aircraft upgrades with subsidiary companies, though doesn't name them.

His departure in 2014 from Great Slave was not an amicable parting, he said. He declined to elaborate.

Yellowknifer requested an interview with Discovery Air. In response, Sheila Venman, vice-president of human resources and communications, issued an e-mailed statement.

"(Adam) was a valued founder and pioneer developer of the Northern helicopter aviation industry when he made the decision to retire from the company," the statement said. "We believe that the current leadership at (Great Slave Helicopters) is doing an outstanding job at managing and improving the company and we are fully committed to the communities, indigenous partners and customers we serve in the NWT and globally."

Bembridge said he faced difficulty in retirement mode. It took him about 14 months to realize that if one is to live in the North, one must work.

Bembridge said HNZ Group Inc. approached him about starting a new company after his one-year non-compete clause with Great Slave expired.

"I had already made a couple attempts to buy Great Slave Helicopters back, however, they were unsuccessful so it looked like a very viable option to get back in the business with somebody that understands the helicopter business and has been successful at it," he said.

Bembridge personally holds an equity share in Acasta, contributing 25 per cent of the start-up capital.

HNZ Group Inc., he said, contributed the rest, which was $3.4 million worth of used helicopters that form the base of the new company's fleet.

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