President & CEO, Prime Aviation
As an aviation company, we try to develop our expertise everywhere, and so we manage aircraft for high net-worth individuals. Based on their requirements, we manage their crews, pilots, maintenance, and operations. They should just be able to go to their aircraft and fly where they want, while we worry about the details. We also manage a charter aircraft that supports one of the major oil companies in the region. We are providing the air bridge for Tengizchevroil (TCO) down in Atyrau, between Atyrau city and their base at Tengiz. On its behalf, we operate an aircraft as a shuttle between the two, and also provide a complete meet and greet service in Atyrau for its incoming staff. When they arrive from overseas our staff meet them, get them through the process, take them to the TCO gathering service where all arriving staff are mustered or grouped together, provide them with overnight accommodation, and then the next day put them on the air bridge over to Tengiz. We also entirely manage the Tengiz airfield. Air traffic control, operations, airfield safety, security, and check in; we do the lot. We manage three maintenance facilities in the country, with hangers at each facility. All of these facilities come under our ESL145 maintenance approval.
CEO, Eurocopter Kazakhstan Engineering
The issue in Kazakhstan is not only to build a factory and have helicopters; we also want to transfer skills. We want people to have the ability to customize any helicopter and perhaps, one day, even design one, although that is as yet a remote project. The higher you are on the industrialization ladder, the more time you need to achieve your targets. Another issue in Kazakhstan is that by law we are obliged to deliver in the year we are contracted. This is a major issue in our business because a commercial helicopter’s assembly time varies between 14 and 24 months, which means that we are obliged to start a supply and production operation in Germany before being contracted by various bodies in Kazakhstan. If we sign a contract in April, we have just a few months in which to deliver. This means we cannot develop our industrialization as we would wish to. However, we hope to solve this problem over 2014. Our target is to have the helicopters for painting and customization works at least six months before delivery in Kazakhstan. We would also ensure that the product meets EU and US standards.
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KAZAKHSTAN - Real Estate & Construction
Interview
CEO, Mercury Properties