BELL HELICOPTER PROPOSED SALES AND SUPPORT BRANCH IN ARGENTINA The official external analysis is divided in two sections, opportunities and threats and they are as follows: Our opportunities are that Argentina provides us centralized support to several South American countries that we currently service via forward support teams. This gives us the ability to respond to our South American customers in hours instead of days or weeks. This will also allow us to expand to other potential customers that we currently do not provide aircraft or support for. Argentina is largely a educated workforce and finding skilled workers will not be a problem. The location of our proposed site is in Buenos Aires, Argentina at the Ministro Pistarini International Airport. Its location will allow us access to direct air cargo transport and is only 52.5 miles from the Port in Ensenada, Argentina. There in not a major rotary wing aviation company in the region, all support is external and dependent on teams being sent from the major manufacturers. All sales take place in the US and require customers to travel long distances to preview and purchase aircraft. This is time consuming and can result in loss in revenue for the customer in need. This new facility can afford us the ability to provide almost instantaneous support in the region. We have several aircraft registered in the region and as operational life nears the end replacement aircraft will be needed. Again we will be the sole provider in the region and that reduces delivery costs to the customer which in turn makes us the more attractive source. Also according to Numbeo.com The current exchange rate is 4.10 Pesos to 1 American Dollar The current threats we face are: Argentina’s de facto official language is Spanish or Castellano as they call it. The language barrier and cultural difference is going to require addressing should we go forward. Also petroleum costs are higher that our domestic costs which will require us to consider a flight hour management program to minimize fuel costs.
The official internal analysis is broken into two parts: strengths and weaknesses and they are as follows: Our strengths are as follows: according to an article written by Matt Thurber in the August edition of AIN online news release, Bell Helicopter was ranked #1 in product support by Aviation International News’ 2011 Product Support Survey for the sixth consecutive year. We have three locations, two in the U.S. and one in Canada; we are growing an estimated 10% per year. We are looking at expanding into Europe and Singapore as well according to our last press release in the bellhelicopter.com webpage. We currently have over 7,500 employees providing service to over 120 countries flying Bell aircraft worldwide as last stated in helis.com news release. We have sell over 180 aircraft annually second only to Robinson Aircraft whose sales are merely entry level low capacity/low altitude aircraft according to a Helicopter Annual report on helicopterannual.org
Our weaknesses as of this moment are we currently do not have any fixed wing sales or support divisions. And being solely dependent on rotary wing aircraft we often get overlooked by those who are in need of aircraft to perform ferry duties out of a fear of helicopters in general. The constant media reminders of our aircraft crashing or being shot down in Iraq and Afghanistan also have hurt sales.
Long term goals are to establish a centralized facility capable of supporting several countries in the South American region. We are looking to provide the vast majority of all rotary wing aircraft and support to the region. Once we establish ourselves in that market we will be able to continue to grow and eventually secure the rights to build our aircraft in country near the site further lowering operating cost.
Short term goals are to contact the U.S. Embassy to ensure we are not violating any local or regional laws. Then we’ll have to purchase