Pelligra partners with Skyportz on Australian vertiport network for electric air taxis and drone deliveries

Sky­portz and prop­er­ty devel­op­er Pel­ligra are part­ner­ing to joint­ly devel­op ver­ti­port net­works to attract air taxi and drone deliv­ery ser­vices to Aus­tralia. The Agree­ment builds on a pre­vi­ous part­ner­ship between Sky­portz and oth­er prop­er­ty own­ers such as Secure Park­ing which has hun­dreds of inner city car park­ing sites.

Speak­ing at the Aval­on Air­show Sky­portz CEO, Clem New­ton-Brown said this part­ner­ship was a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward for this emerg­ing indus­try in Aus­tralia.

He said: “We have strong pol­i­cy sup­port from the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment and our air reg­u­la­tor CASA to devel­op advanced air mobil­i­ty in Aus­tralia, with the front run­ner elec­tric air taxis to be cer­ti­fied in the next cou­ple of years. We now need ver­ti­port sites.”

“With the indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial prop­er­ty port­fo­lio of Pel­ligra and the Secure Park­ing inner city car park­ing garages, we can offer a com­pre­hen­sive net­work of ver­ti­port sites in any cap­i­tal city in Aus­tralia.”

Pel­ligra is a third gen­er­a­tion fam­i­ly busi­ness with a port­fo­lio of over 1200 projects in Vic­to­ria, South Aus­tralia, New South Wales, Queens­land and over­seas. The com­pa­ny Pel­ligra owns the for­mer Hold­en and Ford man­u­fac­tur­ing plants in Vic­to­ria and South Aus­tralia with plans to devel­op high tech hubs.

Pel­ligra CEO Ross Pel­ligra added: “We are a pri­vate­ly owned com­pa­ny with a large port­fo­lio of sites across Aus­tralia. In addi­tion to ver­ti­port sites we are devel­op­ing a local man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try for eVTOL air­craft and serv­ing as a base for the Asia Pacif­ic mar­ket.

“We lost our local car man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try and I would like to see Aus­tralia devel­op an elec­tric air taxi man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ty. The for­mer car assem­bly plants would be per­fect.”

New­ton-Brown rejoined: “Sky­portz has assem­bled the pieces of the puz­zle. What we need now is to find State and local Gov­ern­ments that want to sup­port the indus­try and the invest­ment we want to make.

“US based con­sul­tan­cy, Nexa Cap­i­tal has assessed the poten­tial return on five use cas­es in cities such as Mel­bourne to be in excess of $5 bil­lion in the first 20 years of oper­a­tions.

“The key to this indus­try is break­ing the nexus between avi­a­tion and exist­ing air­ports. We need to devel­op a net­work of new ver­ti­port sites if the indus­try is to reach its poten­tial and Sky­portz is ready­ing the land­scape to part­ner with infra­struc­ture part­ners such as Pel­ligra.”