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Heli Support New Zealand

From New Zealand to your home page

Rebecca Field | October 18, 2016

Estimated reading time 4 minutes, 6 seconds.

Did you know that New Zealand lays claim to more helicopters per capita than any other country in the world?

Heli Support New Zealand

With a rugged landscape, minimal roadways, and mountains everywhere — it’s easy to picture helicopters flying through Middle Earth, the fictional setting of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, which he shot in New Zealand. It’s even easier to imagine what the scenery must look like from above.

This made it the perfect landscape for Heli Support New Zealand to put down roots, sell, build and maintain helicopters — and quickly expand into a global enterprise.

“We are supporting people all the way from Brazil right up into Asia,” said Sacha Wetzel, head of aircraft and component sales at Heli Support.

The company’s primary function is aircraft maintenance, sales and leasing. This is why it released its new website right before HAI Heli-Expo, back in March — to allow more access to its services from anywhere in the world.

Aircraft maintenance at Heli Support

“There is a lot of frustration surrounding the shortage of information online,” said Wetzel. “We want to help you decide if our product is the right one for you, help you get the right documentation for your country, and reduce email traffic with your purchases online.”

The website allows Heli Support clients to choose products and decide online if they can make a purchase before having to go through email — it streamlines the process.

“On some items, we’re doing aircraft sales to anywhere in the world. We’ve sold everywhere,” said Wetzel. The 12-year-old company was founded by engineers Jason and Kelly Buick from Whitehorse, Yukon, in 2004. “They’ve been working around helicopters for around 25 years,” said Wetzel. “They’re a helicopter family. They grew this business up.”

 

The company is a Turbomeca distributor and partner, able to sell products to clients for the same price they would get from Turbomeca.

“The end user is not affected by coming to us if they’re interested in Turbomeca products,” said Wetzel. “Right now our primary support is around engines and engine supply of modules. We own our own engines and get a lot of people asking about part-life engines.”

Heli Support engine service

Wetzel noted some people trade in new engines for part-life engines, and vice versa.

“We have a lot of flexibility in the way that if someone has a new engine and their helicopter is worth too much, they’ll come to us for a part-life engine,” said Wetzel. “That way you can afford to get different people looking at it.”

Or alternatively, people will come to them for brand new engines so that they can give their helicopters new life.

Heli Support’s staff has a heightened ability to offer buyer support and flexibility.

Painting the aircraft

“At our local shop, we’re able to rebuild the aircraft from the bottom up — we do that quite often,” said Wetzel. “We have the ability to supply any part — for the [Airbus] AS350 and H125 there’s nothing we can’t do.”

www.helisupportnz.com

+64 3 443 2903

If you would like to see your company featured in Insight, contact sales director Frank Sargeant at frank@mhmpub.com.

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