Wingcopter Supported by ITOCHU Corps “Begin TC procedure for Japan”

Wing­copter, a lead­ing drone deliv­ery com­pa­ny, announced this week it has embarked on the Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (TC) pro­ce­dure for Japan with sup­port from the ITOCHU Cor­po­ra­tion, reports a press release.

The Ger­man-based Wing­copter has applied and received accep­tance for begin­ning the TC process of its Wing­copter 198 deliv­ery drone. “This marks the first time a for­eign company’s drone and the first time a fixed-wing drone has been accept­ed under the unmanned air­craft class‑1 type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by the Japan Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau (JCAB) of the Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture, Trans­port and Tourism,” explains the release.

Once suc­cess­ful, Wing­copter will be grant­ed per­mis­sion to con­duct flights equiv­a­lent to Lev­el 4. This refers to Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) in pop­u­lat­ed areas, sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand­ing the appli­ca­tion range of deliv­ery drones. 

This makes Wing­copter and its part­ner ITOCHU one of the first to set up com­mer­cial BVLOS oper­a­tions in Japan. With its aging pop­u­la­tion and remote land­scapes, includ­ing many inhab­it­ed islands, the coun­try is con­sid­ered one of the world’s pri­ma­ry mar­kets for drone deliv­ery.

Flo­ri­an-Michael Adolf, Head of Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion at Wing­copter, remarked, “This rep­re­sents sig­nif­i­cant progress for com­mer­cial drone deliv­ery in Japan and beyond. We are striv­ing for type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, as it under­scores our com­mit­ment to safe­ty and the pro­fes­sion­al­ism of our team.” 

Masa­haru Sato, Deputy Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Aero­space Depart­ment at ITOCHU, added, “We see great poten­tial in Wingcopter’s deliv­ery drone to make everybody’s life bet­ter. It is our hon­our to col­lab­o­rate with its ded­i­cat­ed pro­fes­sion­als, led by the man­age­ment team. We look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing this excit­ing jour­ney togeth­er.”

The release con­tin­ues, “The part­ners aim to use the Wing­copter 198 to estab­lish drone deliv­ery net­works and ser­vices that can pro­vide an air bridge to over­come var­i­ous social chal­lenges by trans­port­ing vital and urgent­ly need­ed goods quick­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly over many kilo­me­tres and above chal­leng­ing ter­rain.”

ITOCHU, a long-time busi­ness part­ner and investor in Wing­copter, who hold exten­sive knowl­edge, net­works and resources in Japan, will con­duct sev­er­al Proof of Con­cepts under spe­cial per­mits until the expect­ed TC is achieved. 

In May last year, the col­lab­o­ra­tion suc­cess­ful­ly con­duct­ed the imple­men­ta­tion of med­ical blood prod­uct trans­porta­tion by Wingcopter’s deliv­ery drones, the first of its kind in Japan.

 In addi­tion to the TC efforts in Japan, Wing­copter is cur­rent­ly under­go­ing the FAA type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process in the U.S, which will also unlock the huge com­mer­cial poten­tial of the North Amer­i­can mar­ket.

War­ren Buf­fett (Berk­shire Hath­away)

Back­ground

Wingcopter’s investors also include the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank, REWE Group, Salvia, XAI tech­nolo­gies, Xplor­er Cap­i­tal, Futu­ry Cap­i­tal, DRONE FUND, SYNERJET, Expa, Hes­sen Kap­i­tal III and Core­cam Cap­i­tal Part­ners.

Itochu Cor­po­ra­tion has its HQ in Mina­to City, Tokyo and is one of the largest SOGO SHOSHA in Japan (a busi­ness that trades in a wide vari­ety of prod­ucts). War­ren Buf­fet, and his com­pa­ny Berk­shire Hath­away, has made a sub­stan­tial invest­ment in the firm. 

For more infor­ma­tion

www.wingcopter.com

https://www.itochu.co.jp/en/index.html

(Drone images: Wing­copter)

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