The Post Premium: The rural aviation industry is facing its darkest days. Featuring NZAAA Executive Officer Tony Michelle.
The biggest rural downturn in decades has forced farmers to tighten their purse strings and cut discretionary spending, which for many includes paying to add fertiliser to their pastures.
For aerial top-dressers that has meant a dramatic drop in work, leaving multimillion-dollar aircraft sitting in sheds and an industry forced to consolidate.
[NZ Agricultural Aviation Association] Executive Officer Tony Michelle is a career agriculture pilot and business owner of 33 years. He says the current downturn rural New Zealand is experiencing is the biggest one he can recall.
“It eclipses the late 1980s and late 1990s downturns, and I think that’s reflected in what’s happening in the primary sector.
Difficult times on the farm flow on to the agricultural top-dressing industry, with the tonnage of fertiliser applied in the first two quarters of this year down 52% compared with 2022.
That’s a huge chunk of business activity that’s been taken out of the industry, and we’ve got a number of companies that are rationalising their fleets.”
NZAAA Executive Officer Tony Michelle
Michelle does not hold much hope that predictions of a turnaround in 2025 for agriculture aviation will come to pass.
“The challenges are going to be there for quite some time.”