Norway: Elfly Seaplane Manufacturer moves to New Facilities at Torp Sandefjord Airport

Elfly, a devel­op­er of an all-elec­tric sea­plane called Noe­mi announced recent­ly it has moved into new facil­i­ties at Torp Sande­fjord Air­port in south­ern Nor­way, reports a press release.

The expand­ing com­pa­ny has tak­en a 1,160 square metre office and work­shop space in the airport’s large hangar, where it plans to build the first full-scale Noe­mi sea­plane. The new loca­tion offers plen­ty of space to expand as its pro­gram ramps up. Test­ing and val­i­da­tions will also be under­tak­en here. 

Neigh­bours include the Nor­we­gian Air Ambu­lance and its increas­ing fleet of emer­gency med­ical ser­vices H135 and H145 heli­copters; sev­er­al fly­ing schools and train­ing estab­lish­ments; as well as region­al air­line Wideroe’s Dash 8‑Q400 main­te­nance facil­i­ty.

Torp Air­port is owned by the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Sande­fjord and Vest­fold coun­ty, along­side Vest­fold Fly­plass­in­vest AS. It is the largest pri­vate­ly-owned air­port in Nor­way, posi­tioned 110 km south­west of Oslo, with a full-scale NATO stan­dard run­way.  The air­port enjoys inter­na­tion­al and nation­al sched­uled air ser­vices from Wideroe, Ryanair, Air Baltic, Nor­we­gian and Wizz Air, along with var­i­ous char­ter flights.

Torp Sande­fjord Air­port

Eric Lithun, Founder and CEO of Elfly, com­ment­ed, “Torp Air­port is an excel­lent new loca­tion for us to build on and engi­neer. It affords us plen­ty of space to grow for test­ing, while ramp­ing up our team.”

He con­tin­ued, “More­over, the airport’s dynam­ic man­age­ment are enthused by our plans to return sea­plane trav­el to the fjords and lakes of Nor­way by using elec­tric pow­er.” The com­pa­ny will retain, for now, its present busi­ness unit in Bergen.

Gisle Skansen, CEO of TORP Sande­fjord Air­port, added, “We are thrilled of the news that Elfly has cho­sen our air­port as their hub for devel­op­ing next gen­er­a­tion sea­planes. TORP is encour­ag­ing the com­pa­ny to intro­duce zero-emis­sion air­craft and con­tribute towards more sus­tain­able and envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly avi­a­tion.  We look for­ward to fol­low­ing their progress very close­ly as a val­ued new ten­ant.”

Elfly is devel­op­ing a full-scale pro­to­type of its Noe­mi in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nor­we­gian Gov­ern­ment, with fund­ing new­ly secured from Eno­va SF.  Con­struc­tion is on sched­ule to com­mence this sum­mer. The goal is to fly the first pro­to­type in 2026.

In prepa­ra­tion, Elfly’s team has swelled to 30 staff with senior engi­neers recent­ly join­ing from Air­bus, Pila­tus Air­craft, Hon­da­Jet, Dornier Sea­w­ings and Heart Aero­space.

Eric Lithun

Back­ground

The Elfly Group was found­ed in 2018 and estab­lished in Bergen, Nor­way. Its lead­ing pro­gram is a mod­ern-day amphibi­ous air­craft with bat­ter­ies and two elec­tric engines, inspired by the de Hav­il­land Twin Otter and Grumman’s Mal­lard. 

The Noe­mi sea­plane is designed for 200 km air jour­neys and is to be pow­ered by two elec­tric motors with up to 1MW com­bined out­put. Its design is part of a research project, fund­ed by pri­vate investors and the Research Coun­cil of Nor­way.

Elfly is work­ing to obtain cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for its pro­to­type to CS23 Lev­el 4, which enables the air­craft to evolve up to a 19-seat sea­plane. Ini­tial­ly, it will be offered as a business/executive cab­in with nine seats, plus lug­gage, com­ple­ment­ed by a VIP lay­out with six seats. A tourist plea­sure flight mod­el with 13 seats, minus bag­gage, as well as car­go and medieval ver­sions are also planned.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.el-fly.no

(Images: Elfly)

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