Royal Mail partners with drone consortium to deliver first parcel in the UK via an unmanned aerial vehicle

Roy­al Mail has become the first par­cel car­ri­er in the UK to trans­port a par­cel via an unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle (UAV), after join­ing forces with a con­sor­tium of estab­lished drone com­pa­nies – includ­ing DronePrep and Sky­ports — and address­ing tech­nol­o­gy what3words.

The ini­tial drone deliv­ery was made to a remote light­house on the Isle of Mull — the sec­ond-largest island of the Inner Hebrides which is locat­ed off the west coast of Scot­land — this month.

This is the first step in a ground­break­ing con­sul­ta­tion pro­gramme and tri­al which will start in ear­ly 2021, focus­ing on engag­ing with the com­mu­ni­ty to explore the via­bil­i­ty of using drones to deliv­er to rur­al com­mu­ni­ties on the Isle of Mull, where Sky­ports is already using its drones to help NHS Scot­land with the response to COVID-19.

Roy­al Mail is the lead­ing provider of postal and deliv­ery ser­vices in the UK, and this will also help iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties to sup­port post­men and post­women when deliv­er­ing to remote areas and address­es.

Dun­can Walk­er, Chief Exec­u­tive of Sky­ports, said: “We are delight­ed to con­tribute our expe­ri­ence of fly­ing deliv­ery drones for the NHS around the Isle of Mull to this excit­ing project. Deliv­ery drones are already proven as a fast and reli­able solu­tion for trans­port­ing pack­ages to poor­ly con­nect­ed rur­al com­mu­ni­ties. 

“This tri­al with Roy­al Mail, what3words and DronePrep has the poten­tial to lay the foun­da­tions for a future ser­vice to com­ple­ment the one pro­vid­ed by Roy­al Mail’s hard-work­ing posties that we rely on today.”

Gareth What­more, CEO of DronePrep & Con­sor­tia Lead, said: “In the last cou­ple of years, drone tech­nol­o­gy has matured and with it the industry’s abil­i­ty to solve real world chal­lenges. Our col­lab­o­ra­tion with our superb part­ners Roy­al Mail, Sky­ports, what3words and the res­i­dents of the Isle of Mull is a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty for us all to learn more about how drones can com­ple­ment and sup­ple­ment exist­ing Roy­al Mail deliv­ery ser­vices.”

As with all Roy­al Mail deliv­er­ies across the UK, the post­code will route the par­cel towards its des­ti­na­tion. The local post­man will then use drone deliv­ery to reach the most remote loca­tions in their patch faster.

For the drone deliv­ery, res­i­dents con­sult­ed on the Isle of Mull will be invit­ed to use the DronePrep plat­form to assess the via­bil­i­ty of their prop­er­ty for drone deliv­ery and pin­point a suit­able land­ing loca­tion with­in their own­er­ship using the what3words inte­gra­tion.

To enable this for the tri­al, Roy­al Mail is ask­ing recip­i­ents to pro­vide the what3words address, a 3 metre by 3 metre square, that cor­re­sponds to the pre­cise land­ing point for deliv­ery of Roy­al Mail parcels via the drone from the Roy­al Mail van.

Chris Sheldrick, co-founder of what3words, added: “By labelling every 3m square in the UK with three words – a what3words address – recip­i­ents are very eas­i­ly able to com­mu­ni­cate their desired drone deliv­ery loca­tion. 2020 has demon­strat­ed the need for fast, reli­able deliv­er­ies and what3words is a per­fect tool to assist Roy­al Mail on their mis­sion to con­tin­ue to inno­vate.”

Nick Lan­don, Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer at Roy­al Mail, said: “Deliv­er­ing the first live par­cel in the UK by an unmanned drone was a land­mark day for us. We are incred­i­bly proud to be work­ing with DronePrep, Sky­ports and what3words to tri­al new ways to sup­port the more remote and iso­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ties we serve.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in par­cel vol­umes this year and this is just one of the ways we are look­ing at to sup­port our front­line deliv­ery staff and deliv­er fast, con­ve­nient and green ser­vices for all of our cus­tomers.”

Tom Nunn, local post­man for Isle of Mull, added: “I am very pleased to be involved in this fan­tas­tic tri­al. Some of the hous­es on the Isle of Mull include a thir­ty-minute walk to the front door, so the use of drones will be a huge help!”