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We partner with people to achieve real gains on the land by being safe, respectful, progressive and sustainable
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Who We Are
In 1991 Bob Cleland established his own topdressing operation, Airspread South in Mossburn, Southland. It was many years earlier, whilst watching his father load Bob's aircraft that Richard decided that flying would be the job for him. Approximately 20 years later, with his commercial pilots license, Bob offered to train him up and gave him his first job in the industry. After flying commercially throughout Southland, Australia and Canada, we were delighted take over the business from Bob and Elspeth in 2013, Bob had accumulated an impressive 31,128 hours flying during his career.
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Richard continues to develop his skills as a pilot, keen to look into new ways to
improve and advance the business through improving equipment,technology,
safety and staff development. We have updated our aircraft and are moving well
towards a paperless workplace. Whilst these things are important, no business would
work effectively without the people that work within it - Airspread South is no exception.
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We took on Al Klein in 2015 as a driver, he was already a commercial pilot, thinking about moving into airlines. We definitely saw his potential, and trained him up to fly in overalls not epilettes. He has moved his young family to Mossburn and is a valuable and involved member of the local community, just as he is in our business. His calm diligent nature is not only appreciated by us but also the CAA who awarded him the "Rookie pilot of the year" award in 2019.
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When he moved into the pilot seat, he encouraged John Klein (or Dad) to come and
load for us. His knowledge of machinery, the local area, and a lifetime of practical
experience has been a great contribution to keeping business running smoothly.
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Jordan joined the team as a school leaver, he has an interest in rugby (Southland U19s) and is keen to fly. He has learned his new trade quickly and has become a highly respected member of our team.
Sam (Richard's wife) is the Safety Manager for the business and keeps an
eye on the book work as well as delivering the odd coffee and biccies to
some unexpected areas.
What We Do
Airspread South provides aerial application services and bases the whole business on the following mission statement -
"To partner with people to achieve real gains on the land by being safe, respectful, progressive and sustainable".
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We are committed to constantly improving strategies and processes to achieve the highest level of health and safety performance whilst delivering a premium service to our clients.
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Since taking over the business, Richard has seen many changes in the industry with product and technology development as well as the new Safety Management System implementation by the CAA. We are passionate about being progressive in our business and were one of the first Agricultural Businesses to get our CAA accreditation.
We strive to constantly improve how we do things and embrace new technologies. All our health and safety and daily flight records are now done online and we have invested in GPS systems, and are will be able to deliver automated variable rate in the near future which can add another level of safety around delivery of product in sensitive areas.
