Coulson Reveals How Black Saturday Changed Everything

Coulson Aviation revolutionised aerial firefighting by developing a system allowing its aircraft to tackle blazes at night. Wayne Coulson, the business’ CEO, talks us through the moment that inspired the change

Coulson’s history goes back decades. Talk us through how the business developed? 

My father founded our group of companies back in 1960, and I started when I was 12, washing pickups and cutting the grass. We began in timber, so I grew up on the land base in timber harvesting. In my early 20s, we evolved into helicopter logging, which was flying timber. We had our own private timber on the west coast of British Columbia on Vancouver Island. I took over the business in my early 20s when my father became very ill, and worked through aviation as we also got into lean manufacturing in the late ’80s and early ’90s.