A LOCAL satellite communications company has experienced significant growth the past 18 months after changing its business model to focus on the top end of the market, including projects such as Gorgon LNG.
A LOCAL satellite communications company has experienced significant growth the past 18 months after changing its business model to focus on the top end of the market, including projects such as Gorgon LNG.
West-Perth based Amstar Satellite Communications, which recently moved from Osborne Park, has altered its product set from simple to high-end satellite services, achieving significant growth.
Amstar commercial manager Daniel Garnsey runs the day to day operations for the growing company after taking the helm from chief executive Andy McClean, who is now based in Indonesia and was the founding director of telco Amcom.
“This was his baby since 2005, I took over 18 months ago and changed the direction of the business quite considerably,” Mr Garnsey said.
“We’ve changed out the whole product set and the type of industry or the type of company within the industry we service.
“Predominantly when I took over there was a big focus on exploration companies who wanted cheap and nasty satellite services and we’ve swapped to a very expensive high-end satellite network that’s impenetrable and very reliable.”
This change, along with some improved relationships with key partners, has lifted the company’s bottom line.
“We currently do about 400 per cent on what we did 18 months ago,” he explained.
“The direction of the business has changed considerably towards a high-yielding, high-profit, low-volume product.”
Mr Garnsey said Amstar was an integrator, taking the best of all parts of the market and providing a solution for the end user.
“Everything we do points to satellite communications, for example, we recently deployed a service to the Kintyre uranium mine for Cameco,” Mr Garnsey said.
Teaming up with the country’s largest independently operated satellite communications company NewSat on four separate contracts during the last 12 months has been a great benefit to both organisations.
Last week the companies announced a new deal that will see NewSat provide communications via satellite to Amstar, delivering services to operational and administrative aspects of the $43 billion Gorgon LNG project, as well as personal services for more than 600 staff living on-site.
“Gorgon, year one to us, is worth about $US1.5 million,” he said.
“This deal is the feather in our cap (but) it’s disappointing that they’re not going to go with satellite once they go to the 4000 man camp because we would’ve got that contract as well.”
However Mr Garnsey said Amstar, which remains a small privately owned company currently turning over between $3 million and $5 million annually, still had plenty of business to target in order to maintain profitability.
And he highlighted Amstar’s limited permanent staff size as beneficial.
“We run a big reseller network so we only have five staff at the moment with up to 15 resellers.
“Plus we use a lot of external contractors that contract to us for installations and engineering.
“So we try and keep everything as light as we can as in what we carry on the payroll and we pay contractors to do jobs we need done externally.”
