Skyports receives funding boost from Irelandia Aviation to support vertiport site programme

Sky­ports has extend­ed its Series A fund­ing to £6 mil­lion with an invest­ment from Ire­landia Avi­a­tion, con­tin­u­ing its ambi­tious pro­gramme to acquire suit­able sites for pas­sen­ger and car­go ver­ti­ports in cities across the world.

The urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) infra­struc­ture provider and drone deliv­ery oper­a­tor will also use the funds to expand its team and com­mer­cialise its urban and rur­al drone deliv­ery ser­vices.

As part of the invest­ment, founder and man­ag­ing part­ner of Ire­landia Avi­a­tion, Declan Ryan, will take a seat on the Sky­ports board.

Dun­can Walk­er, Chief Exec­u­tive of Sky­ports, said: “It is a priv­i­lege to wel­come Declan to the board and tes­ta­ment to our ambi­tion that he will be tak­ing this posi­tion. Their invest­ment fur­ther strength­ens our finan­cial posi­tion.  Sky­ports investors have a com­bined bal­ance sheet in excess of £70 bil­lion, putting us in a unique posi­tion to build scale in this emerg­ing indus­try.”

Ire­landia Avi­a­tion joins exist­ing Series A investors Deutsche Bahn Dig­i­tal Ven­tures, Groupe ADP and Lev­i­tate Cap­i­tal in the invest­ment round.

Ryan adds: “We are delight­ed to part­ner with the team at Sky­ports, who have become lead­ers in the devel­op­ment of the infra­struc­ture required to enable the UAM indus­try.

“We at Ire­landia look for­ward to work­ing with Sky­ports, avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tors, man­u­fac­tur­ers and oper­a­tors to expand in new mar­kets and make UAM and drone ser­vices a real­i­ty glob­al­ly. We look for­ward to fur­ther­ing Irelandia’s demon­strat­ed track record of democ­ra­tis­ing air trav­el around the world.”

In Octo­ber 2019, Sky­ports col­lab­o­rat­ed with Ger­man eVTOL start-up Volo­copter to unveil the world’s first pas­sen­ger ver­ti­port pro­to­type.

The Volo­Port, launched at the ITS World Con­gress in Sin­ga­pore, show­cased mul­ti­ple tech­nolo­gies, allowed exten­sive reg­u­la­to­ry, pub­lic engage­ment and oper­a­tional test­ing. Mark­ing the first step towards per­ma­nent oper­a­tion, com­mer­cial flights in Sin­ga­pore are planned with­in the next cou­ple of years.