Step Change award win

We are delighted to have won the Step Change award at the Institute of Couriers, National Courier Awards 2023, for our steps to adopt drones to deliver mail to the Highlands and Islands.

Chris Paxton, Strategic Insight & Innovation Manager, who has managed our work on drones, accepted the award and said ‘As the UK's largest parcel carrier it is important that Royal Mail lead the way in helping reducing carbon emissions in our sector.

‘Electric Drones have the potential to significantly reduce our emissions in some of the more remote areas of the UK we serve and it’s great to see that all the hard work which has gone into setting up the Orkney i-Port has been recognised by our peers’.

Royal Mail and Skyports Drone Services established the first permanent daily UK drone delivery service between three islands on Orkney earlier this year.

Letters and parcels are transported from Royal Mail’s Kirkwall Delivery Office to Stromness, where they are picked up by Skyports Drone Services and delivered to Royal Mail colleagues on Graemsay and Hoy. From here our posties carry out their usual island delivery routes.

The I-Port operation improves access for rural communities, shortens delivery times to Graemsay and Hoy and significantly improves service levels during poor weather, when our traditional transport network e.g. ferries services are often suspected,

Our first delivery using a drone, or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as they are also known, was in 2020 to a remote lighthouse on the Isle of Mull, closely followed by a range of trial flights to review the technology and establish appropriate use cases.

• In May 2021 we conducted a one-month trial of a Government-funded “air bridge” from the Cornish mainland to the Isles of Scilly, which saw us use a larger fixed wing UAV to deliver essential mail, PPE and COVID testing kits to the islands approximately 70 miles beyond visual line of sight.
• In October 2021, we trialled scheduled, autonomous flights for two weeks between Kirkwall and North Ronaldsay (both in the Orkney Islands) with Windracers Ltd. The first step towards our goal of developing permanent, reliable, lower emission delivery solutions for remote communities.
• In April 2022 we completed a trial on the Shetland Islands in partnership with Windracers. Test flights for the service involved 50-mile flights carrying mail between Tingwall Airport in Lerwick and Unst – Britain’s most northerly island, with a population of around 630 people.

UAVs can deliver increased reliability (e.g. in foggy conditions), additional connectivity for remote communities, better environmental credentials versus conventional air freight and longer term - once legislation allows - reduced costs.

Environmentally – alongside improved delivery, UAVs help us to reduce emissions by avoiding commercial aircraft or boat transfers, and will form part of our future low emission delivery strategy as part of Steps to Zero.

Pictured: Second from left- Christopher Paxton, Strategic Insight & Innovation Manager and third from left - Charles Alway, Customer Operations Manager for Orkney.