Wing Drone Delivery Sets Up in New Zealand

U.S‑based Wing Drone Deliv­ery con­tin­ues to rapid­ly expand its ser­vices. With oper­a­tions already in Fin­land, Aus­tralia, Amer­i­ca and more recent­ly Ire­land, the com­pa­ny is now set­ting up in New Zealand, but with a dif­fer­ence.

While the com­pa­ny has reg­is­tered Wing Avi­a­tion NZ Ltd., it has an ini­tial eye on trans­port­ing small parcels and mail rather than health­care or every­day prod­ucts, reports stuff.co.nz. The com­pa­ny has been active with its efforts to com­mer­cialise small par­cel drone deliv­ery in Aus­tralia for the past eight years.

A Wing spokes­woman said reg­is­ter­ing the New Zealand busi­ness was an “explorato­ry” step. The com­pa­ny does not have a time­line for deliv­ery oper­a­tions in New Zealand and was yet to sub­mit any appli­ca­tions with the coun­try’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty.

She com­ment­ed, ”We would announce any plans for drone deliv­ery oper­a­tions well in advance, and only after exten­sive engage­ment with the local com­mu­ni­ty, and the appro­pri­ate New Zealand gov­ern­ment and reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties.”

The spokes­woman con­tin­ued, “Wing is invest­ing in a range of pilot pro­grams, designed to help enable drone deliv­ery at scale, and bring deliv­ery to more com­mu­ni­ties around the world. We’ve received strong indi­ca­tions from part­ners and cus­tomers in our exist­ing oper­at­ing areas that safe, fast, and sus­tain­able deliv­ery is a high val­ue ser­vice, and we believe we can ulti­mate­ly offer it at a low­er cost than ground-based deliv­ery approach­es.”

Greg Har­ford

Greg Har­ford, CEO of Retail NZ, com­ment­ed, “Drone deliv­ery for retail­ers could have some advan­tages, espe­cial­ly in con­gest­ed cities, but as there are some tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions in terms of dis­tance, I don’t see drones becom­ing a main­stream part of the New Zealand shop­ping expe­ri­ence in the fore­see­able future.”

Har­ford added, “Mean­while, drone deliv­ery could be an option if couri­er and freight costs sky­rock­et­ed, but whether that stacks up in terms of the eco­nom­ics, I’m not so sure.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://wing.com/

(News Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/)

(Top image: Wing)