Skyports secures $3.13 million investment from ST Engineering in Singapore

Sky­ports has com­plet­ed its over­sub­scribed Series B cap­i­tal raise with fresh invest­ment from ST Engi­neer­ing, which has over 45 years of expe­ri­ence in the aero­space indus­try, and brings total fund­ing to $26.13 mil­lion.

ST Engineering’s invest­ment in Sky­ports builds on a his­to­ry of col­lab­o­ra­tion in Sin­ga­pore since ear­ly 2021 to joint­ly oper­ate reser­voir mon­i­tor­ing and inspec­tion drone ser­vices for Singapore’s Pub­lic Util­i­ties Board.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion brings togeth­er Sky­ports’ expert flight oper­a­tions capa­bil­i­ties and ST Engineering’s drone sys­tem solu­tion, DroNet, to imple­ment autonomous Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) flights across the city-state’s net­work of reser­voirs.

Sky­ports, ST Engi­neer­ing and Sum­it­o­mo Cor­po­ra­tion formed a con­sor­tium in ear­ly 2022 to pro­vide unmanned air­craft ser­vices for ship-to-shore par­cel deliv­ery in Sin­ga­pore.

Sky­ports CEO Dun­can Walk­er said: “The Asian mar­ket is a crit­i­cal area of growth for advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM), and one we are com­mit­ted to cul­ti­vat­ing.

“Invest­ment from Kane­mat­su Cor­po­ra­tion, and now ST Engi­neer­ing, demon­strates that our con­fi­dence in this mar­ket is sup­port­ed by indus­try lead­ers across the region, and we look for­ward to bring­ing our exper­tise togeth­er to expand our capa­bil­i­ties.”

ST Engi­neer­ing VP of unmanned air sys­tems Soo Soon Teong added: “Our invest­ment in Sky­ports stems from our con­fi­dence in the future of AAM, and the exper­tise that Sky­ports con­tin­ues to grow in build­ing towards that future.

“With even stronger ties now between ST Engi­neer­ing and Sky­ports, we will accel­er­ate efforts in mar­ry­ing our com­ple­men­tary AAM strengths and advance the DroNet solu­tion glob­al­ly.”

Oth­er Series B investors include Japan­ese con­glom­er­ate Kane­mat­su Cor­po­ra­tion, glob­al indus­tri­al prop­er­ty group Good­man Group, Ital­ian air­port plat­form 2i Aero­por­ti, and US-based Ven­ture Cap­i­tal firm Green­Point.

The final close of Sky­ports’ Series B fund­ing round rep­re­sents the strong prospects of the com­pa­ny and is a tes­ta­ment to the con­tin­ued upward tra­jec­to­ry of the AAM indus­try.

In Decem­ber 2020, The Euro­pean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty Sin­ga­pore (CAAS) updat­ed an arrange­ment to facil­i­tate CAAS val­i­da­tion of EASA air­craft type cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, allow­ing the two reg­u­la­tors to col­lab­o­rate on facil­i­tat­ing avi­a­tion inno­va­tions..

In May, Sky­ports and Jurong Port, oper­a­tor of Singapore’s mul­ti-pur­pose car­go port, agreed to devel­op ship-to-shore infra­struc­ture for large-scale drone deliv­ery oper­a­tions using Sky­ports’ expe­ri­ence of build­ing take-off and land­ing infra­struc­ture for deliv­er­ies to be inte­grat­ed into the exist­ing logis­tics oper­a­tions of Singapore’s Jurong Port.