Skyports signs with Jurong Port to develop maritime drone delivery infrastructure

Sky­ports and Jurong Port, oper­a­tor of Singapore’s mul­ti-pur­pose car­go port, have signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) to devel­op ship-to-shore infra­struc­ture for large-scale drone deliv­ery oper­a­tions and expand the coun­try’s bustling mar­itime sec­tor. 

The MoU will draw on Sky­ports’ glob­al expe­ri­ence of build­ing take-off and land­ing infra­struc­ture for car­go drone deliv­er­ies to be inte­grat­ed into the exist­ing logis­tics oper­a­tions of Singapore’s Jurong Port.

Sky­ports head of Asia Pacif­ic Yun-Yuan Tay said: “Tremen­dous progress has been made in mar­itime drone deliv­ery ser­vices over the past year, and infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment is the next crit­i­cal step in real­is­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties afford­ed by large-scale drone deliv­ery ser­vices. 

“We are part­ner­ing with Jurong Port to take tan­gi­ble steps towards design­ing Singapore’s first full-scale infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment project and look for­ward to bring­ing bet­ter effi­cien­cy, safe­ty and val­ue to the ship­ping and logis­tics indus­try.”

Tri­als will be car­ried out simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with ongo­ing port oper­a­tions at the same time as Sky­ports engages with rel­e­vant pub­lic sec­tor organ­i­sa­tions, reg­u­la­tors, and pri­vate enti­ties to devel­op crit­i­cal reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works for deploy­ing large-scale car­go drone deliv­ery ser­vices.

Jurong Port assis­tant vice pres­i­dent Wal­ter Lin added: “Drone deliv­ery tech­nol­o­gy has demon­strat­ed its abil­i­ty to improve mar­itime process­es and devel­op a sup­port­ing infra­struc­ture to trans­form the future of logis­tics and ship­ping. 

“As one of the world’s busiest anchor­ages, Jurong Port is con­stant­ly look­ing out for solu­tions to ben­e­fit the ship­ping and mar­itime indus­try, where drone deliv­ery will play an inte­gral role in the port’s evo­lu­tion.”

Sin­ga­pore Mar­itime and Port Author­i­ty direc­tor Ng Yi Han con­tin­ued: “The MoU rep­re­sents an impor­tant mile­stone towards com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of mar­itime ship-to-shore car­go drone deliv­ery. 

“Drone deliv­ery will bring about faster deliv­ery times and reduced emis­sions, and we look for­ward to sup­port­ing our part­ners as the mar­itime indus­try con­tin­ues to lever­age tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tion to strength­en effi­cien­cy and resilience.”

Jurong Port pro­vides ‘best-in-class’ mul­ti­pur­pose port ser­vices, hav­ing served Sin­ga­pore for more than 50 years as the main point of entry, han­dling bulk, break-bulk and con­tainer­ised car­go, while man­ag­ing tens of thou­sands of ves­sel-calls annu­al­ly. 

In Decem­ber 2020, Volo­copter com­mit­ted to launch­ing its VoloC­i­ty air taxi ser­vice in Sin­ga­pore with the Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Board of Sin­ga­pore (EDB) and the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty of Sin­ga­pore (CAAS). 

At the same time, The Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) and CAAS updat­ed a bilat­er­al arrange­ment to facil­i­tate val­i­da­tion of EASA air­craft type cer­ti­fi­ca­tions on eVTOL air­craft.