Newspaper Story: Our client Drone Delivery Canada was featured in Inside Halton

Drone will fly over ‘railway in the sky’ within DSV

When the new DSV Canada’s headquarters and warehouse in Milton opens this year, the facility will feature “state-of-the-art logistics capabilities.”

The innovation extends to the use of a drone delivery platform within its 1.1-million-square-foot site, as part of its agreement with drone technology company Drone Delivery Canada (DDC).

DDC will deploy its drone flight infrastructure on DSV sites this quarter, including the DroneSpot takeoff and landing zones. And in the first quarter of 2020, they will deploy the electric-powered Sparrow delivery drone, which has a payload capacity of four and a half kilograms and can cover a distance of up to 30 kilometres, to fly on a fixed route from one end of the distribution centre to the other end – within DSV.

“We monitor the system from our operations control centre here in Vaughan – just east of Milton… They fly unmanned, automatically. They’re loaded with a route. And they do what they do… We can take control of the drones remotely if necessary,” Michael Zahra, president and CEO of DDC, told the Champion.

The operations will also be done in accordance with the Canadian Aviation Regulations and Transport Canada flight authorizations.

To start with, there will only be one dedicated route where the drone will fly back and forth over the “railway in the sky.”

Calling the agreement between the company and DSV as “unprecedented,” Zahra said there’s a potential of seeing 20 or more routes being added in 2020 – and that larger drones might also be deployed “as the use cases evolve.”

In a news release, Martin Roos, managing director of DSV Air and Sea Canada, said that the company “is dedicated to delivering innovative and integrated supply chain solutions.”

“With a global view in mind, our focus is on continuously optimizing our local partners’ supply chains. That means a long-term vision that opens up new markets … Our strong partnership with Air Canada Cargo and now DDC will offer our current and potential partners best-in-class solutions and service excellence that is scalable and future-proof.”

“We have looked to overcome some of today’s challenges by investing in tomorrow’s opportunities, and we are ready for the next steps.”

DSV Canada’s new facility is located on the Fifth Line, just north of Derry Road.