Skyports Drone Services to launch Orkney drone delivery flights for Royal Mail

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices has today announced the launch of the Orkney I‑Port oper­a­tion, a ful­ly elec­tric drone logis­tics project estab­lished in part­ner­ship with Roy­al Mail, Orkney Islands Coun­cil Har­bour Author­i­ty and Loganair.

The com­pa­ny is one of nine win­ners of the Freight Inno­va­tion Fund Accel­er­a­tor. The project will deliv­er dai­ly inter-port deliv­ery of Roy­al Mail items and shore-to-ship deliv­er­ies, the first UK drone deliv­ery project which can be con­duct­ed on a per­ma­nent basis under exist­ing reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works.

Orkney’s island geog­ra­phy and harsh weath­er affect the abil­i­ty to pro­vide an unin­ter­rupt­ed deliv­ery ser­vice. Postal deliv­er­ies arrive from main­land Scot­land to Kirk­wall Air­port via the Loganair RMA Orkney Fly­er, where they are deliv­ered to res­i­dents on Orkney’s Main­land, or trans­port­ed to one of the 19 oth­er inhab­it­ed islands by fer­ry or small pas­sen­ger plane.

Paus­es in the fer­ry sched­ule are com­mon dur­ing poor weath­er due the chal­lenges of dock­ing safe­ly. Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices will estab­lish a dai­ly inter-island mail dis­tri­b­u­tion ser­vice, ini­tial­ly oper­at­ing between three loca­tions for three months.

Post will be deliv­ered by ground trans­porta­tion from Kirk­wall to a Strom­ness hub and trans­port­ed by drone to Roy­al Mail sites on Graem­say and the North of Hoy, from where postal work­ers will car­ry out their usu­al island deliv­ery routes.

The new ser­vice is set to launch in this quar­ter, pro­vid­ing con­sid­er­able time, cost and emis­sion sav­ings and improved con­nec­tiv­i­ty for island res­i­dents. Shore-to-ship flight oper­a­tions will pro­vide a seam­less link between Orkney Islands Coun­cil Har­bour Author­i­ty and ves­sels in its port.

The com­pa­ny will pro­vide logis­tics for deliv­ery of doc­u­men­ta­tion and pro­vi­sions, and bunker sam­ples. It will con­duct a fea­si­bil­i­ty study in part­ner­ship with Loganair to explore the future of heavy pay­load oper­a­tions in Orkney.

The I‑Port project is fund­ed by the Depart­ment for Transport’s Freight Inno­va­tion Fund and exe­cut­ed by the Con­nect­ed Places Cat­a­pult to address chal­lenges in the UK’s freight sec­tor and make it more effi­cient and clean­er.

Alex Brown, direc­tor at Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices, said: “Rur­al and mar­itime logis­tics are con­tin­gent on access, weath­er and per­son­nel, and if one of these fac­tors is com­pro­mised, so too is the abil­i­ty to pro­vide a safe and reli­able ser­vice.

Orkney is just one exam­ple of a hard-to-reach loca­tion that will ben­e­fit sig­nif­i­cant­ly from reg­u­lar drone oper­a­tions. We look for­ward to demon­strat­ing how our flights can improve exist­ing ser­vices on the island, improve con­nec­tiv­i­ty for res­i­dents and
sup­port the work of Orkney’s postal staff.”

Chris Pax­ton, Head of Drone Tri­als at Roy­al Mail, added: “Using a ful­ly elec­tric drone on a per­ma­nent basis sup­ports Roy­al Mail’s con­tin­ued dri­ve to reduce emis­sions, whilst con­nect­ing the island com­mu­ni­ties we deliv­er to.”

David Daw­son, Orkney Coun­cil­lor and Chair of the Council’s Devel­op­ment and Infra­struc­ture Com­mit­tee, con­tin­ued: “The pos­si­bil­i­ty of drone deliv­er­ies from shore to ship could add an extra dimen­sion to the ser­vices pro­vid­ed by our Marine Ser­vices team.”

Nico­la Yates OBE, CEO at Con­nect­ed Places Cat­a­pult, con­clud­ed: “We are pleased to wel­come the nine SMEs to the first round of the Freight Inno­va­tion Fund Accel­er­a­tor to devel­op new ideas that promise to help tack­le the freight sector’s emerg­ing needs.”