Delair-Tech expands into the professional UAS market and raises 4 million dollars of investment

Watch out world, here comes Parrot. Another investment for the constructors of the worlds most popular RPAS the AR Drone. Parrot have put money into French company Delair-Tech this joins their earlier flying wing investment in SenseFly.

Congratulations to the Delair-Tech team from sUAS News a well deserved achievement.

Delair-Tech has raised 4 million dollars of private investment from the ANDROMEDE holding company and also the PARROT technology company, thus accelerating its growth in the ever expanding professional civil UAS market.

“This investment will finance our growth and allow us to create a sound industrial capacity. It will allow us to build 100 UAS systems per year from 2014 onwards, set up a sales force and continue our Research and Development”, according to Michael de Lagarde, Delair-Tech’s President & CEO.

“Until now, we have mainly carried out service orientated contracts for our industrial clients such as SNCF, ErDF, Veolia, Telespazio and also DRTgaz (GDF SUEZ). From now on we will focus on system and product sales. This investment is a turning point for us, allowing us to harness and transform our technology and innovation into real business growth.” explains Benjamin Benharrosh, the company’s Director of Business Development.

This investment is crucial in the building of a French civil UAS industrial market sector and gives Delair-Tech, a key player in this market, the means to export its technology and penetrate the expanding market. Delair-Tech’s first UAS model, the DT-18, is the only certified mini-UAV in France to fly on long unlimited distance missions in civilian airspace. Delair-Tech’s mini-UAS is ready for large scale production and deployment. Its long endurance capacity is unique for surveying energy infrastructure and facilities (pipelines (oil & gas), electrical lines etc.).

For ANDROMEDE, the holding of the Heriard Dubreuil family, investment in Delair-Tech’s mini-UAS’s will allow the operator to offer new solutions for precision farming, in the wine-making market in particular. This goes hand in hand with their investment in FLYTERRA, a US company that deploys and resells of UAS. In September 2013, FLYTERRA signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Delair-Tech for the commercialisation of their UAS systems in the US and Canada.

For Henri Seydoux, the CEO of PARROT “the investment of PARROT in Delair-Tech is fully in line with our strategy to expand into the professional civil UAS market. Delair-Tech has developed a technological capacity for long-distance missions, for niche markets that complement our current ones”.