Southport CEO Addresses Rotary Club

Maybury said that Southport hopes to grow their revenues in the aerospace and commercial markets, stressing that as Southport continues to develop the need for services and accommodations will also rise, thus benefiting Southport.

"As you develop an area, you bring people into the economy they require facilities and all the spin-off economics – indirect benefits," said Maybury.

Initiatives the company is looking into include: the creation of a new hanger, expansion into the unmanned aerial vehicles and systems sector (UVAs), continued their support of Stevenson Aviation, including the building of a new student residence and assisting with marketing to bring in a new international student program; marketing and selling their residential properties; and increasing their profits from the recreation centre.

Maybury said that the new hanger they are looking to construct at Southport will be approximately 30,000 square feet.

"As they increase pilot production they need more aircraft. When they need more aircraft they need a place to put them – that's the hanger. The benefit for us, of course, is that we increase aircraft storage space and we're increasing the value of our properties," said Maybury to the Rotary Club.

Maybury also said that Southport is looking in to the unmanned aerial vehicles and sytems (UVAs) sector. Essentially, those are aircraft and systems that are operated without a pilot on board and what they want to build is the brains of these aircraft.

"Not to jump to the assumption that there are going to be drones flying around here without pilots, that's not the target market that we're looking at. In 2010 we did the market research and found out that high tech manufacturing really fits our portfolio, it grows our assets, it fits with our customer base, and it is something we want to target," said Maybury. "The particular market we are targeting is the Canadian civil and/or military mini market. We're looking at any of those attached companies that do the high tech manufacturing."

But Southport's expansions don't stop there, the company is also branching out into a number of different realty projects. They're building a new building for Stevenson Aviation to replace the current 70-year-old building; they are building a new 52-room student housing complex for the Allied Wings air force flight training program; Southport is looking to market and selling residential housing in their Horizon Village properties, comprising of four homes and 20 service lots; and they are looking to revitalize the recreation centre, which due to the closure of the aquaplex and the dropping in senior memberships, is looking for new ways of making money.

From 1940 to 1990 Southport housed Canadian Air Force Base, Portage la Prairie – not long after the closure of CFB Portage they were awarded the military flight training contract which was the jumping off point for more recent growth. Stephen Maybury has been with the company since the spring of 2010.

Story courtesy Robin Dudgeon and Portage Daily Graphic.