Helicopter Leasing Group’s speculative purchase of two Sikorsky S-76s from the Hong Kong government flying service has paid off, according to company partner Martin Nash. “We have leased the aircraft to Brazilian companies for offshore oil exploration in Brazil. The country has a very exciting and dynamic oil industry. Petrobras (the national oil company) is in the process of issuing new contracts for a whole range of different helicopters and we see some good opportunities down there,” he said.

The helicopters will generally be involved in ferrying people to and from the rigs. “Although they’re not the world’s greatest lifting aircraft, they can carry cargo for the companies,” added Nash. He admitted that the group had negotiated a good price for the aircraft and despite not having a contract in place prior to the purchase, it was confident about deployment. “The market has been pretty active recently; we don’t

have very much competition with what we do and we’re certainly busy enough,” he said.

Helicopter Leasing Group is a joint venture between the British-owned Nash Group Limited and Norwegian-based HSL International and this is not the first time the group has looked outside of Europe for new additions. “We are a totally international company, so although we tend to lease mainly in Europe (as well as Brazil), we’ll buy wherever we have to. We just bought a helicopter in Australia and shipped it out to Sweden to work on a contract,” said Nash.