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Skyports, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Collaborate “to Explore Middle-Mile Drone Logistics” 

UK-based Sky­ports, a lead­ing glob­al drone ser­vices com­pa­ny, announced this week a strate­gic part­ner­ship with the Port Author­i­ty of New York and New Jer­sey (PANYNJ), reports a press release. The col­lab­o­ra­tion is to explore the poten­tial of mid­dle-mile drone logis­tics in the region.

The release says, “The Port Author­i­ty over­sees much of the region’s air, land, rail and mar­itime trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture net­work, includ­ing: John F. Kennedy Inter­na­tion­al Air­port (JFK), LaGuardia Air­port (LGA), and Newark Lib­er­ty Air­port (EWR); the Port of New York and New Jer­sey, one of the largest and busiest port sys­tems in North Amer­i­ca; in addi­tion to major tun­nels and bridge cross­ings with­in the Port Dis­trict, which spans a 25-mile radius around the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty. “

“This mul­ti-year col­lab­o­ra­tion,” con­tin­ues the release, “will help realise PANYNJ’s vision for imple­ment­ing and scal­ing uncrewed aer­i­al sys­tems (UAS) across its exten­sive port­fo­lio of mar­itime, avi­a­tion and trans­porta­tion assets.”

The part­ner­ship is to ini­tial­ly inves­ti­gate how mid­dle-mile all-elec­tric drones can sup­port the Port Authority’s goal of reduc­ing vol­umes of truck traf­fic which cur­rent­ly utilise the Port’s many bridges and tun­nels. The Author­i­ty aims to re-allo­cate a large por­tion of its cross-Hud­son freight move­ments to green­er modes of trans­port like UAS. 

The col­lab­o­ra­tion will begin with a fea­si­bil­i­ty study to iden­ti­fy reg­u­la­to­ry, tech­ni­cal, oper­a­tional and com­mer­cial path­ways across the Port Dis­trict for enabling drone ser­vices, with an ini­tial focus on mid­dle-mile appli­ca­tions.

Alex Brown, Direc­tor of Sky­ports, remarked, “The Port Author­i­ty, with its exten­sive port­fo­lio of mar­itime and avi­a­tion assets, includ­ing three of the busiest air­ports in the U.S, as well as the nation’s sec­ond-largest port by total car­go vol­umes, is well posi­tioned to inte­grate UAS appli­ca­tions with­in a com­plex oper­at­ing envi­ron­ment.”

He con­tin­ued, “We look for­ward to  explor­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of drone oper­a­tions in the Hud­son Riv­er air­space, onboard­ing ini­tial cus­tomers, and pro­duc­ing an action­able roadmap for UAS in New York City, with a view towards launch­ing proof-of-con­cept oper­a­tions with­in the Port Dis­trict.” Adding, “Our part­ner­ship is a piv­otal step for mar­itime and logis­tics focused drone oper­a­tions in the U.S.”  

The “mid­dle mile” refers to a seg­ment of the sup­ply chain between the dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tre (or ware­house) to a retail store or local ful­fil­ment cen­tre, but not direct­ly to the end con­sumer. This part of the chain is crit­i­cal for effi­cient­ly mov­ing large quan­ti­ties of goods clos­er to their final des­ti­na­tions, thus prepar­ing for the “last mile” deliv­ery, which is the final step of deliv­er­ing goods to cus­tomers. 

Seth Wain­er, Inno­va­tion Pro­gram Direc­tor at PANYNJ, com­ment­ed, “It may seem like some­thing from the Jet­sons, but if drone car­go proves viable it may be a low-car­bon way to move the most valu­able items between New York and New Jer­sey. We are explor­ing routes and start­ing to look for cus­tomers who may be inter­est­ed in invest­ing in this space along­side us.”

Sky­ports has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the mar­itime and port sec­tors. The com­pa­ny oper­ates dai­ly com­mer­cial deliv­er­ies to ves­sels in the Port of Sin­ga­pore, pro­vid­ing a safer, green­er, and faster alter­na­tive to tra­di­tion­al deliv­ery ser­vices. The drone ser­vices com­pa­ny also works with Norway’s state-owned ener­gy com­pa­ny, Equinor, to deliv­er sup­plies to oil instal­la­tions in the North Sea. In Scot­land, Sky­ports oper­ates an inter-island drone deliv­ery ser­vice in part­ner­ship with Roy­al Mail, the UK postal ser­vice. 

For com­pa­nies inter­est­ed in col­lab­o­rat­ing with Skyports/PANYNJ on drone appli­ca­tions in the NYC region, should con­tact:- 

Steven Spinel­lo at: steven@skyports.net 

For more infor­ma­tion

www.skyportsdroneservices.com 

https://www.panynj.gov/port-authority/en/index.html

(Images: Sky­ports)

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