Shipping to ships
Maritime shipping giant Maersk has announced that it has made the first official parcel drone delivery to an undocked ship. The drone test was conducted near the Danish port of Kalundborg. An LE 4-8X Dual Atex drone from French company Xamen Technologies delivered a small parcel containing cookies onto the deck of the tanker, Maersk Edgar.
In a report on the drone test posted on its website yesterday (8 March), Maersk said: “The original plan to launch from shore was changed because of fog, so the team worked from the barge instead.”
The distance from the shore to the tanker would have been about 1km, whereas the barge was about 250m from the tanker.
“It’s a totally new step in delivery to vessels,” said the Maersk Edgar’s Captain Peder Christensen. “Today it’s cookies. Another time it might be medicine which we need to treat someone on board.”
The shipping company plans to look at future applications for the drones.
According to Maersk: “delivery of a small parcel over 1km from shore to vessel would take about 1.5 minutes, and the max pay-load of this test drone is 2kg.”
Maersk added that there are other drones already in operation which can carry up to 10kg – but they are not currently ATEX approved. The ATEX approval means that the drone is certified as being safe to use in potentially explosive environments – which is obviously a key concern for a tanker operator.
Markus Kuhn, Supply Chain Manager at Maersk Tankers, commented: “Drones can make savings in both costs and time. There are high costs for on-board delivery of small parcels, filled with urgent spare parts or mail, because of the need for a barge.”
The report on the Maersk website added: “Costs for a barge are on average USD1,000 and can be higher. That means, drone use could with the current payload bring potential savings of USD 3,000-9,000 per vessel per year.”
Click here to see the report on the Maersk website, which includes a link to a five-minute video of the drone test.
As previously reported by Post&Parcel, Airbus Helicopters and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) last month to conduct proof-of-concept trials for delivering parcels using drones. The tests in Singapore will initially focus on drone delivery in urban environments, but the project may extend to a second trial which will “cover delivery of goods such as urgent medicine, oil samples and spare electronic parts from a parcel station located at the Singapore coast to ships anchored at bay”.
