Taking to the skies

Paul’s journey into the skies began with competitive aerobatics. After winning Australia’s aerobatic championships in both the advanced and unlimited categories, it was a natural progression for him to venture into airshows. “I guess I had a bit of a passion for that,” he says.

Business diversification

His background, however, is as a shipwright, which was how Trojan Fibreglass, a composite resin manufacturing business, began. This then led to the freight servicing arm of Paul Bennet Group, Trojan Freight.

“When I moved to Newcastle, I was right into sailing, and so I was building skiffs. That sort of led to the fibreglass business, and so then I ended up with Trojan Fiberglass.

“Because the fiberglass business was growing so much, we found ourselves buying a lot of material from overseas. And so to start with, all that material got freighted to us from outside contractors. We bought one small truck that we could do our own deliveries on, and then soon that wasn’t big enough, so we got a bigger truck.

“Then we had two trucks, and then we sold the first one and then bought a semi, and one thing just led to another. Now there’s 10 trucks and 26 or 27 trailers, and so then we ended up doing freight for everyone else as well.”

The role of cross-border payments

Given the diversity of Paul’s businesses, international payments play an essential role. From sourcing materials for Trojan Fiberglass to procuring aircraft for his flight school, overseas transactions are frequent and complex. “We buy a lot of material from overseas,” Paul says.

“With the aeroplanes, when we’ve got to buy cylinders, pistons, engines, spares, propellers – any of those things – we normally buy that in US dollars, and most of that gear comes in from the US.

“With our flight school, we buy our aeroplanes from overseas, so from the Czech Republic. So we use WorldFirst to pay for all those aircraft.”