Singapore: SASS, Heron AirBridge, CWT Aerospace collaborate on maritime drone operations

The Sin­ga­pore Asso­ci­a­tion of ship­builders and Ser­vices (SASS), Heron Air­Bridge and CWT Aero­space signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) this week, reports a press release.

The aim is to cre­ate a mar­itime drone deliv­ery ser­vice to har­boured ships and boats as well as those pass­ing close to shore to trans­port food, spares and much need­ed med­ical sup­plies. The full poten­tial of marine drone deliv­er­ies is yet to be realised due to reg­u­la­to­ry restric­tions and the lack of a ded­i­cat­ed oper­a­tional frame­work across the logis­tics and car­go indus­try, but this is chang­ing as seen with anoth­er break­ing sto­ry this week from Sky­ports and its col­lab­o­ra­tion with South Kore­an drone com­pa­ny, Marine Drone Tech.

Dan­ny Lien, pres­i­dent of SASS, com­ment­ed, “The ship sup­ply and ser­vice indus­try are con­stant­ly under pres­sure to deliv­er more cost-effec­tive solu­tions to our cus­tomers. Drone logis­tics deliv­ery holds tremen­dous poten­tial to trans­form how our mem­bers serve the ship­ping indus­try.” He con­tin­ued, “This col­lab­o­ra­tion with Heron and CWT Aero­space, mar­ket lead­ers in the Sin­ga­pore avi­a­tion and logis­tics indus­tries, will enable us to devel­op sys­tem-wide end-to-end solu­tions to make effi­cient drone deliv­er­ies pos­si­ble.”

Mem­bers of the Part­ner­ship Sign the MOU

The release explains, “Cap­i­tal­is­ing on Singapore’s glob­al mar­itime hub sta­tus, the new part­ner­ship seeks to high­light the vast ben­e­fits of mar­itime drone oper­a­tions, such as short­er lead time, an alter­na­tive deliv­ery method in case boats are not allowed in poor sea states, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and the increased tech­nol­o­gy pro­file of the marine sec­tor.”

Under the terms of the MOU, the com­pa­nies will col­lab­o­rate to:-

: Stream­line work­flows and process­es that will facil­i­tate drone deliv­er­ies between land, ves­sels and off­shore plat­forms.

: Improve the dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture for drone mis­sion plan­ning, ver­ti­port and flight oper­a­tions, author­i­ty over­sight and aviation/marine reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance.

: Enhance the ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture for logis­tics pro­cess­ing, cus­toms clear­ance, air­craft main­te­nance and stor­age ded­i­cat­ed to mar­itime drone sup­port.

Ryan Lee, CEO and co-Founder of Heron Air­Bridge, point­ed out, “Drone oper­a­tions in the mar­itime envi­ron­ment have unique com­plex­i­ties and chal­lenges due to the unpre­dictabil­i­ty of weath­er, ships’ sched­ules, and the need to con­sid­er oth­er risks at sea. This part­ner­ship is a nat­ur­al exten­sion of our mis­sion to help address the spe­cif­ic needs of the Sin­ga­pore mar­itime com­mu­ni­ty.”

Alex Yang, MD of CWT Aero­space, added, “We will com­bine our tech­nol­o­gy and aero­space exper­tise with the logis­tics and infra­struc­ture capa­bil­i­ties with­in the CWT Group to devel­op con­cepts, solu­tions and sys­tems for car­go ver­ti­port oper­a­tions.”

F‑Drones Mak­ing a Sin­ga­pore Mar­itime Deliv­ery (cred­it: F‑Drones)

Back­ground

Estab­lished in 1981 by local ship sup­pli­ers, SASS aims to advance the inter­ests of its mem­bers through tech­nol­o­gy, train­ing and edu­ca­tion. It pro­vides a plat­form that fos­ters col­lab­o­ra­tion between mem­bers to accel­er­ate indus­try advance­ment. The group recent­ly launched its SASS Acad­e­my, which pro­vides sec­tor-spe­cif­ic train­ing pro­grammes to employ­ees of its mem­ber com­pa­nies.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://heron-technology.com/airbridge

https://www.cwtaerospace.com/

https://sass.org.sg/

(Top image: The Sin­ga­pore Asso­ci­a­tion of Ship­sup­pli­ers and Ser­vices, Heron Air­Bridge and CWT Aero­space team up to unlock true val­ue of mar­itime drone deliv­er­ies)