BY MICHAEL BRESLIN

An English-based Italian helicopter distributor, the company's largest, Sloane helicopters, which specialises in maintenance and hiring out specially modified air ambulances, this week officially launched its all-Ireland maintenance operations at St Angelo Airport.

The guests were told that Ireland now has more helicopters per head of population than Britain or the US, the two largest civil helicopter markets in the world.

Its maintenance operations will be centred in a £1.3 purpose-built hangar which was developed by Fermanagh District Council and towards which the Council, the Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment (DETI) and Invest Northern Ireland contributed.

Another main player was the Enniskillen Airport Company, one of whose co-directors, Stephen Finlay made the initial contact with Sloane Helicopters. He was among an array of VIP's who attended the launch, among them Arlene Foster, there as an MLA and Angelo Raimondi, the vice-President of Sales for Augusta Helicopters whose manufacturing base is near Milan.

The newly-elected Chairman of Fermanagh District Council, Alex Baird unveiled the plaque. He was introduced by Jeremy Awenat, the managing director of Sloane Helicopters who paid tribute to the proactive approach of Rodney Connor and his team in Fermanagh Council.

He explained that the search for a suitable location for the firm's engineering base had taken three years. Dublin was looked at and ruled out and, in the Spring of 2006, the firm became aware of St Angelo and its newly-built hanger.

"We carried out a detailed project appraisal", he recalled, "the results of which only reinforced our initial impression that this was the best place to open up our maintenance facility.

"It was felt that St Angelo was a better location than most of the other airports in Ireland and offers a much better opportunity to receive more customers".

At present, Sloane Helicopters offers a service that totals 6,000 man hours which the firm hopes to increase to 11,00 man hours over the next 12 months. But, Mr Awenat said he was confident that it could recruit additional engineers.

He explained that its specialist maintenance, overhaul and design service would cater for the growing Republic of Ireland helicopter market.

Invest NI has offered support of £129,000 towards the project which, its spokeswoman said, would help the company with export marketing activities and staff training and promote 12 highly-skilled jobs.

Sloane Helicopters is based in Sywell, England.

Its key activities are aircraft sales, maintenance & distribution and flight training as well as charter and air ambulance operations.

Ian Murphy, the Managing Director of Clients and Entrepreneurship at Invest NI told the gathering there had been rapid growth in the Irish helicopter market over the past number of years and that this was expected to continue".

Councillor Alex Baird, on behalf of the Council, welcomed the guests to, 'God's own county' said that one of the major issues affecting Fermanagh was the lack of appropriate workspace and, so the funding which the Council had received as developers of the purpose-built hangar from DETI and Invest NI had enabled the Council to achieve that.