EIB Provides EUR40 million to Wingcopter for Scaling Up Delivery Drones and Logistics Services

Ger­man start­up, Wing­copter, had a pleas­ant sur­prise recent­ly when The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) hand­ed over EUR40 mil­lion via “a qua­si-equi­ty invest­ment”, reports a press release. The EIB mon­ey is backed by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion InvestEU Pro­gram under its sus­tain­able infra­struc­ture win­dow.

The release explains, “The EIBs invest­ment will assist Wing­copter ramp up pro­duc­tion of its flag­ship 198 drone, expand deliv­ery ser­vices in Europe and over­seas, and accel­er­ate the firm’s inno­va­tion efforts.”

The com­pa­ny is launch­ing a pilot project in south­ern Hesse, Ger­many this sum­mer to tri­al the poten­tial of on-demand trans­port of gro­ceries and oth­er con­sumer goods. The project’s goal is to improve local sup­ply in rur­al Ger­man com­mu­ni­ties through a sus­tain­able deliv­ery ser­vice and will be con­duct­ed togeth­er with the Frank­furt Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences. It is fund­ed by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for Dig­i­tal and Trans­port.

The release con­tin­ues, “Wingcopter’s car­go drones can car­ry up to 5 kg and cov­er dis­tances of around 100 km. While it is elec­tri­cal­ly-pow­ered, the com­pa­ny is present­ly devel­op­ing green hydro­gen to offer longer flight dis­tances.” The addi­tion­al EIB’s invest­ment comes along­side a num­ber of exist­ing investors includ­ing Xplor­er Cap­i­tal, REWE Group, Syn­er­jet, ITOCHU and Expa.

Tom Plüm­mer, Wing­copter co-Founder and CEO, com­ment­ed, “We would like to thank the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank for their trust and sup­port in us. Apart from drone deliv­ery, our goal is also to improve lives by cre­at­ing many jobs in R&D and man­u­fac­tur­ing at our HQ in Europe, as well as in the coun­tries where we pro­vide ser­vices, while train­ing local young peo­ple to oper­ate our drone deliv­ery net­works.”

Tom Plüm­mer

Ambroise Fay­olle, EIB Vice-Pres­i­dent, remarked, “Elec­tric car­go drones are an impor­tant ver­ti­cal seg­ment for a future of sus­tain­able trans­port and logis­tics. This invest­ment under­lines our com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing entre­pre­neurs grow­ing and build­ing advanced green tech­nol­o­gy busi­ness­es in the Euro­pean Union, strength­en­ing our tech­no­log­i­cal com­pet­i­tive­ness, cre­at­ing high­ly skilled jobs and open­ing up new mar­kets, while pre­serv­ing nature. We are proud to be sup­port­ing this Euro­pean suc­cess sto­ry.”

And Pao­lo Gen­tiloni , Euro­pean Com­mis­sion­er for Econ­o­my, added, “InvestEU will con­tin­ue to sup­port invest­ment that will allow Europe to main­tain its posi­tion as a world leader in the devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion of inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts with pos­i­tive real-world appli­ca­tions.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://wingcopter.com

(Images: Wing­copter)