Swoop Aero partners with ChristchurchNZ to unlock skies above cities in Aotearoa, New Zealand

Swoop Aero has partnered with ChristchurchNZ’s Urban Development team to establish a network including the  Aviary, Swoop Aero’s autonomous docking station for a fleet of drones. The Aviary combines landing infrastructure, charging technology, payload exchange, and a user interface in an architecturally-designed structure to seamlessly scale integrated drone logistics and make access to the skies seamless for all.

Swoop Aero integrates drone logistics into the first and last mile of the supply chain to transform its strength and agility.  Since 2017, the drone company has completed over 13,000 Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) flights, safely delivering over 750,000 items worldwide.

In 2018, Swoop Aero became the first company globally to deliver a vaccine via a commercial drone operation in Vanuatu.  The company worked with UNICEF and the Vanuatu Government, with funding from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT),  to increase child immunisation rates across the country, deploying bi-directional drone networks to bridge the gap in access to healthcare for remote island communities.

Swoop Aero‘s service commitment is to provide the world’s leading technology platform for sustainable and scalable drone logistics Their proven technology platform has been deployed across 3 continents including in the UK, Australia,  the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique  and Malawi.  Now the company is looking at bringing their experience to an urban environment.

“We have proven our capabilities in remote and rural areas, ” said Swoop Aero’s CEO Eric Peck. “This partnership will develop and implement the concept of an urban drone logistics network  in a modern, future-facing city bringing us closer to our goal to providing a service accessible by 100 million people in 2025”

By partnering with ChristchurchNZ, Swoop Aero is leveraging the expertise of the economic development agency’s Urban Development team to design a concept for a city-wide urban air logistics network, the first of its kind in the world making access to the skies seamless for both businesses and individuals across the city.

“This partnership is a natural fit for an urban development team within an economic development agency,” said Christchurch’s GM of Urban Development Cath Carter. “Urban development is traditionally about unlocking the economic potential of places, land and buildings. This partnership expands that ambition to urban skies.”