New ownership for Aerodyne Research

As reported earlier our former owners eliminated the parachute business from their holdings. The factory in Durban, South Africa, was sold to the Zodiac group together with the military product catalogue.

Aerodyne is happy to announce that we have organized new owners for Aerodyne Research and the line of Aerodyne sports products. We are pleased to welcome Vidar Antonsen and Ole Petter Hjelle (Ole Petter is the team captain of the Norwegian national FS4 team Arcteryx) as members of the Aerodyne team. Both are from Norway and active skydivers themselves. Although, they will not be involved with the daily management, we view this as a positive development for the company to have their support and assist Aerodyne Research to become an even stronger player in the parachute industry.

President Edward "Bushman" Anderson reports: "Right now we are setting up a new manufacturing facility in the Durban area, in South Africa. The facility will be located in a brand new air-conditioned building and we are installing state of the art machinery. We are also very fortunate to be able to retain many key staff members. Our current Technical Director Dominic Hayhurst will be the Managing Director of Aerodyne Research Manufacturing.

At the same time we have teamed up with Aero Tech in Florida for the production of the Icon harness-container system. Aero Tech is a very professional operation headed by Terry Pike who has more than 30 years experience in the industry. Thiago Muradas, who is a co-designer of the Icon and has been involved with production and R&D; from the start, will supervise training and production."

Aerodyne expects that the changes in production can be implemented smoothly and swiftly but has taken measures to ensure steady supply to its distribution partners. Arnold Collenteur, director of European sales, explains: ". In addition to main canopies and Smart reserves, we now stock Icon container systems. These Icons come with a harness finished to the custom measurements provided with the order. This way our distributors are able sell complete systems to our customers this summer, and deliver in a matter of weeks. Aerodyne is one of the few sport parachute manufacturers that can supply complete systems to our customer's specific needs."