Samsic Assistance has been awarded the ground handling operating licence in Montréal-Trudeau International Airport effective 1 April, 2023.

It follows its successful launch of full handling operations at Vancouver International Airport in April 2022.

Samsic will now be operating in 4 out of the 5 major airports in the country: Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Montreal, plus Chicago O’Hare and San Francisco International Airport in the US, confirming that North America is the key market for the international development of the French ground handler, which is offering a complete set of above and below wing services including PRM and supervision.

Stefano Sciotti, President of Samsic Assistance Canada, said that this confirms the huge investment capacity of the Samsic Group despite the pandemic. “Thanks to the solidity of the Samsic Group, employing 117,000 employees in 27 countries with an annual turnover of 3.5 billion euros, Samsic Assistance has been able to start and develop its North America operations since 2020, in full pandemic.”

He continued: “It is a great honour for us realising that after 3 years more than 500 people decided to join the Samsic family and that 14 carriers decided to partner with Samsic in the region. And this has been done entirely through internal growth.

“The core values of the family-held company, the human touch of our local management teams and the quality of the equipment have resulted into Samsic having among the highest staff retention rates in the region, despite the competitiveness of the labour market.”

The development in the region has been accompanied by huge attention to sustainability, with among the newest and greenest GSE fleets in the latest platforms that have been started up.

And the results are impressive, Sciotti said: “Samsic Assistance’s revenue in 2022 has been 3 times the revenue in 2021, and an additional increase by 100% is planned to take place in 2023. North America will be representing about 20% of Samsic Assistance revenues in 2023.”

On another note, Samsic Assistance’s strong development in 2023, where the company foresees an increase of 50% of the revenues versus 2022, has been pushed by the strong development of the shuttle buses activities in Paris CDG, where in February it started its activity of inter-terminal shuttles awarded by ADP and in March the Air France crew shuttle buses service.

“One group, one family, but a lot of diversified services that we offer to our partners,” he added.