Skyports and Kencoa Aerospace announce project to implement cargo drone deliveries in South Korea

Sky­ports and Ken­coa Aero­space have announced a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing (MoU) to imple­ment car­go drone deliv­er­ies to and on South Korea’s Jeju Island.

The project aims to sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhance logis­tics capa­bil­i­ties on the coun­try’s largest island, which is locat­ed approx­i­mate­ly 60 miles south of the main­land in the Korea Strait.

The agree­ment will ini­ti­ate the devel­op­ment of car­go drone deliv­ery capa­bil­i­ties to enable the car­riage of crit­i­cal sup­plies, includ­ing med­ical pro­vi­sions, across the island.

Dun­can Walk­er, CEO of Sky­ports, said: “South Korea is ripe with oppor­tu­ni­ty in the advanced air mobil­i­ty space, and Jeju Island’s spe­cif­ic vol­canic and island geog­ra­phy pro­vides a unique back­drop on which to demon­strate the ben­e­fits of drone logis­tics.

“With our BVLOS car­go drone oper­a­tions, deliv­ery ser­vices on the island will be up to six times faster, with car­bon emis­sions reduced by up to 90 per cent. Drone deliv­er­ies have the poten­tial to total­ly trans­form ser­vices for res­i­dents and health­care providers, and we’re excit­ed to be amongst the first movers in South Korea – and glob­al­ly.”

As part of the project, Sky­ports will under­take a proof-of-con­cept to demon­strate the ben­e­fits and capa­bil­i­ties of beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) oper­a­tions on Jeju Island.

In addi­tion, the com­pa­ny will also con­duct a fea­si­bil­i­ty assess­ment of set­ting up a car­go drone ver­ti­port and accu­mu­late crit­i­cal eVTOL oper­a­tions data ahead of the com­mence­ment of com­mer­cial oper­a­tions.

To facil­i­tate the project, Ken­coa Aero­space will pro­vide essen­tial insight into the South Kore­an AAM ecosys­tem. The com­pa­ny has already estab­lished a drone oper­a­tion divi­sion on Jeju Island to pro­vide local oper­a­tion head­quar­ters. In addi­tion, Ken­coa Aero­space will lead on the recruit­ment of suit­able per­son­nel and estab­lish a crit­i­cal rela­tion­ship with Jeju Island gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies to sup­port the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of car­go drone oper­a­tions.

Ken­ny Lee, CEO of Ken­coa Aero­space, added: “Through this part­ner­ship with Sky­ports, we will com­mence drone deliv­er­ies in Jeju Province before estab­lish­ing AAM infra­struc­ture and expand­ing into the air taxi indus­try. Jeju’s excel­lent tourist resources will pro­mote the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of our AAM ser­vices. The strength of this part­ner­ship will enable the fastest com­mer­cial launch in Korea.”

Sky­ports’ drone deliv­ery ser­vices have seen great suc­cess in the UK and oth­er loca­tions. Projects include the UK’s first COVID-19 test drone deliv­ery ser­vice in Scot­land with the NHS and the oper­a­tion of an inter-island med­ical drone deliv­ery ser­vice between the Isles of Scil­ly for Roy­al Mail.

In addi­tion, Sky­ports was the first to build a full-scale pas­sen­ger air taxi ver­ti­port, which was launched as part of a tri­al that took place in Sin­ga­pore in 2019.

Ken­coa Aero­space is part­ner­ing with mul­ti­ple advanced air mobil­i­ty com­pa­nies through­out the world to facil­i­tate the cre­ation of AAM net­works glob­al­ly and in Korea. To date, part­ners include Han­wha Sys­tems, Kore­an Air, Air­bus, Boe­ing and Lock­heed Mar­tin. 

Accord­ing to glob­al invest­ment bank Mor­gan Stan­ley, the glob­al advanced air mobil­i­ty mar­ket is expect­ed to grow to $1.5 tril­lion by 2040.