Royal Mail completes first parcel deliveries via drone to Isles of Scilly, new trial to schedule flights from UK mainland

Roy­al Mail has become the UK’s first par­cel car­ri­er to deliv­er mail to a UK island and use a drone to deliv­er parcels — includ­ing essen­tial PPE items and Covid-19 test­ing kits — to remote com­mu­ni­ties on the Isles of Scil­ly.

The British postal ser­vice and couri­er com­pa­ny is also con­duct­ing a one-month tri­al sched­ul­ing autonomous flights between Corn­wall and the islands — which are an arch­i­pel­ago locat­ed off the south­west­ern tip of the coun­ty. The project has been devel­oped via a con­sor­tium led by DronePrep, Sky­ports, Con­sor­tiq, Excal­ibur Health­care, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Southamp­ton and Win­drac­ers. It has been fund­ed by UK Research and Inno­va­tion (UKRI). 

The sched­uled, autonomous flights will use two dif­fer­ent unmanned air­craft to deliv­er mail. A large UAV from Win­drac­ers will car­ry mail from the main­land to the islands, while a small­er VTOL drone oper­at­ed by Sky­ports will then fly parcels between the islands for deliv­ery to res­i­dents.

If suc­cess­ful, Roy­al Mail will con­sid­er expand­ing the tech­nol­o­gy across its net­work, poten­tial­ly pro­vid­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to bet­ter sup­port post­men and post­women in deliv­er­ing to remote areas and address­es in the UK.

Nick Lan­don, Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer at Roy­al Mail, said: “Two more major UK firsts is huge­ly sig­nif­i­cant for us, and we are incred­i­bly proud to find ways to sup­port the more remote and iso­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ties we serve. This is part of our con­stant dri­ve to incor­po­rate the best and most inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies into our net­work.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in par­cel vol­umes since the start of the pan­dem­ic, and this is just one of the ways we are look­ing to sup­port our post­men and post­women in deliv­er­ing fast and con­ve­nient ser­vices for all of our cus­tomers while reduc­ing our car­bon emis­sions.”

Dur­ing the tri­al, there will be a par­tic­u­lar focus on deliv­er­ing crit­i­cal PPE and COVID test­ing kits, from the main­land to com­mu­ni­ties on the Isles of Scil­ly. How­ev­er, oth­er parcels will also be car­ried, includ­ing orders from var­i­ous retail­ers. The larg­er UAV can car­ry rough­ly 100kg worth of mail of all shapes and sizes — equiv­a­lent to a typ­i­cal deliv­ery round.

After Roy­al Mail became the first nation­wide UK par­cel car­ri­er to deliv­er a par­cel for recip­i­ents via a pilot­ed drone to the Isle of Mull in Scot­land, the com­pa­ny will be under­tak­ing a con­sul­ta­tion with res­i­dents and landown­ers on the use of drones to deliv­er to rur­al com­mu­ni­ties on the island in com­ing months. This will be done in part­ner­ship with DronePrep.

Gareth What­more, CEO at DronePrep, said: “This project has giv­en us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to under­stand how mul­ti­ple drone deliv­ery plat­forms can be utilised to over­come and solve real world logis­ti­cal chal­lenges. With the intro­duc­tion of drones to com­ple­ment exist­ing sup­ply chains we have huge oppor­tu­ni­ty to improve the island con­nec­tion.

“It has been a priv­i­lege to lead on this project and bring togeth­er lead­ing UK drone com­pa­nies and real end users like Roy­al Mail and Excal­ibur Health­care Ser­vices to all learn togeth­er how we can use drones to improve the robust­ness of deliv­ery to remote com­mu­ni­ties.”

Dun­can Walk­er, CEO at Sky­ports, added: “Work­ing with world-class part­ners such as Roy­al Mail, our team at Sky­ports has con­duct­ed a num­ber of suc­cess­ful deliv­ery pro­grammes across the UK and beyond. It’s very grat­i­fy­ing to be part of this new project, using cut­ting edge tech­nol­o­gy to con­nect com­mu­ni­ties and make a real dif­fer­ence to peo­ples’ day-to-day lives.”