Kite Aero Begins KITE Drone Production in Australia With Sykes

Aus­tralian uncrewed avi­a­tion com­pa­ny Kite Aero has begun pro­duc­tion of its KITE autonomous logis­tics air­craft in part­ner­ship with Sykes Advanced Man­u­fac­tur­ing, with man­u­fac­tur­ing tak­ing place at Sykes’ facil­i­ty in Gee­long, Vic­to­ria.

The agree­ment gives Kite Aero an Aus­tralian-owned pro­duc­tion base for the KITE, bring­ing com­pos­ite man­u­fac­tur­ing, large-for­mat 3D print­ing and five-axis CNC machin­ing togeth­er at the Gee­long site. The com­pa­nies said the arrange­ment will sup­port pro­duc­tion for com­mer­cial and defence cus­tomers while keep­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty in Aus­tralia.

Kite Aero said it cur­rent­ly has a pipeline of more than 100 KITE air­craft. The com­pa­ny is there­fore mov­ing from estab­lished flight oper­a­tions towards increased man­u­fac­tur­ing capac­i­ty as it seeks to meet demand for autonomous aer­i­al logis­tics.

The KITE is designed to trans­port sup­plies to loca­tions where con­ven­tion­al trans­port may be dif­fi­cult or inef­fi­cient. Accord­ing to Kite Aero, the air­craft has com­plet­ed more than 2,000 flights and 800 flight hours under its cur­rent own­er­ship, in addi­tion to 11,000 flights and 2,500 hours record­ed under pre­vi­ous own­er­ship.

The company’s wider oper­a­tional plat­form, AXIOM, pro­vides soft­ware and oper­a­tional sup­port for its autonomous air­craft.

For Sykes Advanced Man­u­fac­tur­ing, the part­ner­ship expands its com­pos­ite man­u­fac­tur­ing activ­i­ties into uncrewed avi­a­tion. The divi­sion is part of Jeff Sykes & Asso­ciates and oper­ates two facil­i­ties in Gee­long with a com­bined 6,500 square metres of com­pos­ites man­u­fac­tur­ing capac­i­ty.

Sykes’ capa­bil­i­ties include com­pos­ite tool­ing and pro­duc­tion, large-for­mat addi­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing and pre­ci­sion five-axis CNC machin­ing. The com­pa­ny has a man­u­fac­tur­ing his­to­ry dat­ing back to 1966 and has also applied com­pos­ite man­u­fac­tur­ing exper­tise in oth­er sec­tors.

With pro­duc­tion now under­way in Gee­long, Kite Aero will be look­ing to increase out­put while main­tain­ing the oper­a­tional and man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es required for an air­craft designed for repeat­ed autonomous logis­tics mis­sions. The com­pa­ny said local man­u­fac­tur­ing places KITE pro­duc­tion with­in a Five Eyes-aligned sup­ply chain and allows its intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty to remain onshore.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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