By ANDREW WAREING
Northern Ontario Business
Industry growth in mining and forestry has proven to be a boon to business for Gateway Helicopters in North Bay.
Gateway Helicopters Ltd. North Bay base manager Sari Porter says the company started with one helicopter in 1994, and has since nearly doubled its fleet from seven to 12 helicopters in the last three years alone in response to an increase in business from two of its three divisions.
"(That growth) was the result of a strategic decision to do that," she says. "We analyzed each of the market areas (to identify promising areas of growth)."
Gateway Helicopters, which operates two other bases in Sudbury and Timmins, is divided into three divisions. Its charter division serves a primarily mining sector in site development and aerial construction, as well as airborne surveys. It also has a forest management division that includes assisting about 10 forestry companies in their stand management practices and management planning process in the North.
The company also operates a flight training service.
"Flight training is a small part of our operation, and with our co-operation with Canadore College, it has provided us with a number of rewards," says Porter. "The other two divisions have grown."
"We operate under one corporate umbrella with several divisions...for accounting, purchasing and all the administrative functions," she says. "They're strategic units in the sense that each of them addresses a distinct market. The flight training market has a number of distinct characteristics from the charter market and the forestry management market."
Porter says company growth has been assisted by its marketing strategy to emphasize its services as safe and reliable. It has assisted in growing the charter and the forestry sectors of the business by roughly 40 per cent in the last three years.
"We're basically trying to be responsive to what we see as the needs of the market in terms of requirements of machines that will satisfy the needs" of the industries the company serves, she says.
