Last year, tracking and communication company TracPlus had to cut its staff from 47 to 17 after Covid-19 disruptions in the aviation sector derailed projected growth.
TracPlus was founded in 2007 as a live tracking and technology and communication company for the aviation and emergency sectors.
Before the pandemic, the company’s main market was the aviation sector, with some work in land-based tracking.
Now the company had flipped its markets, specialising in land-based tracking, with some aviation work.
Covid-19 had been a "huge event" for the company, its chief executive Trevor McIntyre said.
"From a revenue perspective we’ve gone deep into our core markets of emergency services, first responder and particularly the fire market.
"We’ve been able to diversify our revenue market significantly to be above where we were before Covid.
"Essentially what it did was it gave us the time to pause, reflect and start again," he said.
Letting staff go during Covid-19 was "conflicting".
"As a leader there is a conflict between the people and the company.
"Letting people off is never an easy thing and that was very tough to go through," he said.
The company’s growth had been driven by new legislation across the globe that had been putting an emphasis on safety in the workplace, including legislation that came out of the Australian Royal Commission into the 2020 bushfires.
That led to companies and organisations feeling the need to invest in gear to ensure their people were kept safe in a risky situation, Mr McIntyre said.
"In markets like Australia, where people are in harm’s way, customers need to know where their people are at all times and that is where we are making a huge difference," he said.
Because of the new growth, TracPlus’s revenue was up "a couple of million" on pre-Covid levels.
If the aviation revenue came back in the future, that would be an "upside."
In May last year, TracPlus received an injection of $5 million from technology investment firm Movac, which had been used to help craft growth.
Movac’s strong financial backing helped the company feel confident it could survive the tough time, Mr McIntyre said.
After Covid-19 the company went back to "financial basics," chief revenue officer Tim Lynskey said.
"We had to cut our cloth to suit . . . so we could make the biggest bang for our buck.
"We did that in a very focused fashion," he said.
Following the company’s post-Covid growth, TracPlus was back above 30 staff and was continuing to actively recruit.
