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Odys Aviation, Aramex Announce Collaboration to Develop Cargo Operations in UAE and Oman

Odys Avi­a­tion, a man­u­fac­tur­er of VTOL Air­craft, and Aramex, a provider of express deliv­ery and logis­tics ser­vices to the Mid­dle East as well as oth­er emerg­ing economies, announced this week a col­lab­o­ra­tion to devel­op car­go oper­a­tions in the UAE, Oman and fur­ther parts of the Mid­dle East, reports a press release. 

Odys elec­tric air­craft, designed in mul­ti­ple con­fig­u­ra­tions for car­go, is capa­ble of deliv­er­ing prod­ucts to up to 320 kilo­me­tres and will offer a hybrid-elec­tric range of more than 1,200 kilo­me­tres. As a result, flights have the poten­tial to reduce car­bon emis­sions on pan-GCC flights by up to 76 per­cent while offer­ing a zero-car­bon air car­go alter­na­tive for routes across the UAE, Oman and beyond.

The release explains, “Under the terms of the part­ner­ship, Odys Avi­a­tion and Aramex aim to col­lab­o­rate on the devel­op­ment of autonomous logis­tics pro­grams which will ulti­mate­ly intro­duce car­go flights lever­ag­ing Odys Aviation’s car­go air­craft and Aramex’s fleet man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties.”

The first tri­als are to use Odys Laila air­craft (22 ft wingspan and 130 lbs pay­load) and then expand this to include the company’s Alta air­craft, a full-scale vehi­cle with pay­load capa­bil­i­ties of up to one ton. Aramex intends to sup­port pilot train­ing and a test flight pro­gram to demon­strate the move­ment of car­go between its region­al loca­tions. 

The teams will fur­ther work joint­ly to tai­lor Con­cept of Oper­a­tions (CONOPS) to devel­op Odys air­craft to serve spe­cif­ic local envi­ron­ments. Upon approval from region­al reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies, the two com­pa­nies intend to launch oper­a­tions and com­mer­cial activ­i­ties and expand beyond test pro­grams to demon­stra­ble routes and new mar­kets with­in the GCC.

James Dor­ris, co-Founder and CEO at Odys Avi­a­tion, com­ment­ed, “Our part­ner­ship sig­nals a stead­fast com­mit­ment to launch­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of VTOL air­craft. Build­ing on our announce­ment ear­li­er in 2023 that Odys has part­nered with the UAE Min­istry of Econ­o­my’s NextGen FDI pro­gram, we are look­ing for­ward to lead­ing the devel­op­ment of a sus­tain­able, low-car­bon avi­a­tion sec­tor in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, Oman, and oth­er Gulf Coun­tries.”

Angad Singh, Glob­al Direc­tor of Inno­va­tion at Aramex, added, “VTOL car­go air­crafts will pro­vide us with the oper­a­tional edge for our B2B move­ments and B2C mid­dle mile. The Aramex Inno­va­tion divi­sion has been a pio­neer in deploy­ing BOTs and drones as a part of our Future vehi­cle pro­gram. We look for­ward to part­ner­ing with Odys Avi­a­tion and deploy­ing long range VTOL crafts, which shall dri­ve us fur­ther towards our sus­tain­abil­i­ty and Inno­va­tion tar­gets.”

The release con­tin­ues, “The col­lab­o­ra­tion aims to gen­er­ate a new GCC net­work and oper­at­ing mod­el using VTOL air­craft for Aramex, while enhanc­ing the company’s region­al pres­ence and pro­vid­ing more sus­tain­able options for cus­tomers and part­ners based in the GCC to ship car­go region­al­ly or inter­na­tion­al­ly via the UAE.” 

The agree­ment also helps advance the UAE‑U.S. Part­ner­ship for Accel­er­at­ing Clean Ener­gy (PACE), which was launched in Novem­ber 2022 and aims to help catal­yse USD100 bil­lion in clean ener­gy and decar­boniza­tion projects by 2035. 

Designed for short-haul routes, Odys’ air­craft could play a piv­otal role in defin­ing the future of elec­tric flights in the region and is part “of an effort by com­pa­nies in the GCC to cre­ate a frame­work for coor­di­na­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts and infor­ma­tion shar­ing to con­tribute to the UAE’s long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty vision.”

Odys Avi­a­tion plans to launch a full-scale pro­to­type in 2024, with a view to mak­ing the air­craft avail­able to enter Aramex’s car­go fleet by ear­ly 2028.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.odysaviation.com

www.aramex.com

Top image: From L to R: Vin­cent Frascogna — Vice Pres­i­dent, Busi­ness Devel­op­ment, Odys Avi­a­tion, James Dor­ris — Co-Founder and CEO, Odys Avi­a­tion, Alaa Saou­di — Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer (Express), Aramex and Angad Singh — Glob­al Direc­tor of Inno­va­tion, Aramex (Pho­to: Busi­ness Wire)

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