Windracers Group “Announce Former Royal Mail Boss as New CEO”

Win­drac­ers, the UK-based Autonomous Air­craft Car­go deliv­ery com­pa­ny, announced this week, the appoint­ment of for­mer Roy­al Mail boss, Simon Thomp­son, as its new Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer, reports a press release. He will ini­tial­ly focus on prod­uct R&D, fundrais­ing and glob­al growth of the com­pa­ny.

Thomp­son is a per­fect fit for Win­drac­ers. He says that new tech­nolo­gies like drones could be a game-chang­er, a major dis­rup­tor of the glob­al USD217 bil­lion par­cel indus­try. A for­mer Oca­do and Apple exec­u­tive, Thomp­son left Roy­al Mail last year after two years in charge of the postal ser­vice, a peri­od in which he clashed with unions and MPs over strike action. 

He told the UK Dai­ly Tele­graph, “This drone tech­nol­o­gy is key to get­ting peo­ple what they want, no mat­ter where they live, at a sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er cost than they expe­ri­ence today. We all want what we want, when we want it, no mat­ter where we live. This offers an oppor­tu­ni­ty of using our tech­nol­o­gy to make that an afford­able real­i­ty for every­one.”

The appoint­ment comes as Lon­don-list­ed Roy­al Mail is seek­ing to reform the uni­ver­sal ser­vice oblig­a­tion, a legal oblig­a­tion to deliv­er let­ters to all address­es in the UK six days a week, amid a drop in deliv­er­ies. Win­drac­ers has already worked with the postal com­pa­ny as part of a col­lab­o­ra­tion to deliv­er let­ters to the Scil­ly Isles, Orkney and Shet­land Islands. Places that often suf­fer from slow deliv­ery.

(Image cred­it: Katielee Arrow­smith)

Found­ed in 2017 by for­mer pri­vate equi­ty investor, Stephen Wright, the company’s autonomous drones, which take off and land like an aero­plane, have a 10-metre wingspan and can car­ry up to 100 kilo­grams for 1,000km. They can be used for bulk deliv­er­ies to deliv­ery hubs, rather than drop­ping let­ters and parcels at doors.

Win­drac­ers has secured UKP30 mil­lion in fund­ing to date, large­ly from gov­ern­ment grants. The com­pa­ny has worked with the Roy­al Navy on tri­als that could see drones trans­port sup­plies between ships as well as the British Antarc­tic Sur­vey for var­i­ous sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies. The com­pa­ny says it also has a clear mis­sion of using autonomous drones to deliv­er human­i­tar­i­an aid to remote com­mu­ni­ties or for fight­ing for­est fires.

Thomp­son com­ment­ed, “I’m delight­ed to be join­ing this cut­ting-edge British tech­nol­o­gy busi­ness based in Southamp­ton. Win­drac­ers is the low-cost cham­pi­on of autonomous avi­a­tion and we are now well placed to take this capa­bil­i­ty glob­al. There is much to do, but the recent work with the Roy­al Navy and British Antarc­tic Sur­vey are a clear demon­stra­tion of the company’s great poten­tial to ben­e­fit many busi­ness sec­tors around the world.”

UK Win­drac­ers ULTRA Autonomous Drone “Flies over Antarc­ti­ca”

Win­drac­ers announces suc­cess­ful third fund­ing round from UKRI’s Future Flight

Wright, Founder and Exec­u­tive Chair­man of Win­drac­ers, added, “We are focused on mak­ing self-fly­ing air­craft afford­able, depend­able and an every­day real­i­ty. Simon’s back­ground in build­ing cus­tomer ben­e­fit­ing tech­nol­o­gy, deep logis­tics exper­tise and expe­ri­ence as a FTSE CEO will be invalu­able in sup­port­ing our mis­sion of tak­ing Win­drac­ers’ autonomous drones towards a glob­al plat­form.”

Win­drac­ers has recent­ly expand­ed into North Amer­i­ca, launch­ing the world’s first AI cen­tre focused on autonomous avi­a­tion with the Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty in Indi­ana. Called AIDA3, its aim is “to realise the full trans­for­ma­tion­al poten­tial of uncrewed aer­i­al vehi­cles (UAVs) and relat­ed tech­nolo­gies by ensur­ing self-fly­ing air­craft can be oper­at­ed effi­cient­ly and at scale. The company’s ULTRA UAV has com­plet­ed its first flights in the Unit­ed States with Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) approval,” explains the press release.

Win­drac­ers pro­vides solu­tions across five sec­tors: Mail & Par­cel, Human­i­tar­i­an Assis­tance, Med­ical, Defence and Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion. It has already com­plet­ed suc­cess­ful flight tri­als with Roy­al Mail, Roy­al Navy, MOD, British Antarc­tic Sur­vey and Future Flight chal­lenge for UK Research and Inno­va­tion (UKRI).

For more infor­ma­tion

https://windracers.com/

(News Source: www.dailytelegraph.com)

(Top image: Simon Thomp­son)

For the lat­est news, insights and con­tent regard­ing the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket, please join the fol­low­ing eVTOL Insights chan­nels: What­sApp, Face­book, Insta­gram, Spo­ti­fy, Apple Pod­casts, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.