Tropic Air breaks ground for multi-million dollar investment
The tourism industry got a major boost this morning that is expected to further grow confidence in the industry. It’s a new investment worth fifty million dollars which, when completed, will upgrade and modernize infrastructure and the fleet of Tropic Air in the island of San Pedro. Marion Ali reports.
Marion Ali
“This is how the ground at the San Pedro Municipal Airstrip looks currently but within one year, it should look something like this; a brand new building measuring seven thousand square feet, all for passengers. It’s an investment that Tropic Air’s founder, John Grief says, coupled with the forty million he will put into a new fleet of aircrafts, will be all worth it, despite rising fuel costs.”
John Grief III, President, Tropic Air
“We would actually be happy with break or a small loss for the next few years and we have been criticised from within the company and without the company for making this investment now but we’re very, very confident in the continued appeal of Belize as a tourist destination. We’re denominated in U.S. dollars. There’s no threat of terrorism here so we’re convinced that the tourists are going to keep coming. And as I said earlier, we believe that fortune favours the bull so we could wait around and cry and worry but we decided to move.”
Marion Ali, Reporting
And move ahead is what Tropic Air has done when it began ground work on its new three million-dollar building on the island a few weeks ago.
John Grief III
“It will only be for passengers. There will be no office for me, no office for anybody. It will be state of the art, there will be a lot of glass, a lot of things that tourists and locals would like to see and it will really be something special. We’ve been two years in the design and planning of it.”
The planning and investment in the new terminal is one that Minister of Tourism and San Pedro Area Representative, Manuel Heredia believes is a clear sign of investor-confidence.
Manuel Heredia, Minister of Tourism
“I think that they are investing because they see an environment in upper government that is willing to be transparent and accountable and that is—not only them, I feel like there will be many other that will be investing because of this environment. With the office complex that they are doing, I feel that that will do a milestone for the island also and we have to remember that as the number one tourist destination, I feel that we supposed to have the best amenities for the island. It doesn’t mean to say that we are not thinking for the rest of the country but as it develops we supposed to have the proper infrastructure that you need.”
But aside from the infrastructural investment, Tropic Air will also be pumping money into other areas, such a new fleet of airplanes and amenities.
John Greif
“We’ve bought eleven aircrafts which are fully digital. They’ve taken three dozen round electro mechanical gages and replaced them with all solid state TV screens so we believe it’s enhanced the safety, the maintainability and the dispatch ability of our aircraft. We bought so many airplanes that the factory isn’t even able to deliver them all soon. So the delivery of these planes will be spaced over about five years and when the final one reaches all the existing planes will be gone except for this one, which is the first one. There are other infrastructure projects that are running concurrently. For instance, right now we are constructing a fifty-five thousand dollar gallon fuel farm at the Belize Municipal which increases our jet fuel capacity by about ten times. We’ll be starting on a new cargo and passenger terminal at the Municipal Airport along with a government overall expansion and improvement of the Belize Municipal Airport and then here in San Pedro in the near future we’ll be quadrupling the size of our hanger space where we maintain our airplanes.”
Total amount of the investments will be around fifty million dollars. Reporting for News Five, Marion Ali.
