Even as international drone delivery company Wing continued to expand its activities around the globe over the summer, it appears to have paused aerial services in the Canberra capital of its booming Australian market amid an update of its operating model.
Google corporate cousin Wing has been steadily expanding its business with enthusiastic customers in Australia over the past few years, going so far as to declare the UAV-mad Queensland town of Logan “the drone delivery capital of the world.” Yet the company has now unexpectedly indicated it has effectively suspended operations around the area of capital Canberra – a major population center and market.
The reason for that pause, it turns out, is not due to the enduring opposition some local communities had voiced about potential privacy and noise problems delivery drones posed, but rather shifts in Wing’s own operational strategy in Australia.
During a recent interview with Australian Broadcasting Company radio, Wing Australia’s head of government relations and public policy Jess Suskin said its model had evolved from using its own warehouses as dispatch centers for retailer orders, to establishing flight posts near partner outlets grouped together in shopping malls. While that’s worked wonderfully elsewhere in Oz, Suskin said, “We don’t have a suitable shopping center just yet in the Canberra area.”
No mall, no flight center, no Wing drone deliveries, and – as a secondary result, it would seem – no protests from Canberra area locals who’d opposed the activity since its launch in 2018.
Suskin said the shift away from Wing warehouses – where retailers had to store goods or drop off prepared orders for drone delivery – makes the activity easier for partners by setting up shop alongside them in shopping centers across Australia.
That positioning, Suskin said, also creates added convenience for Australian consumers who often brave clogged roads to get to, access, park, and exit malls for limited purchase needs.
“People have to wait 15 to 20 minutes just to get into the center to run in for that quick item,” Suskin said. “Now, we just put the drones at major shopping centers.”
Except in Canberra – where Wing is still looking for appropriate locations to adapt the new paradigm it has been developing across Australia.
It first tested that approach in Logan, where it recently announced plans to expand drone delivery to a new set of suburbs. The Alphabet-owned company has also pursued the strategy through its partnership with Coles supermarkets, and has said it would look to rent unused retail spaces in malls owned by real estate group Mirvac.
Though its indefatigable critics around Canberra may be cheering the development, it is unlikely Wing has given up on the city as it continues developing business elsewhere. In August, the company announced it would launch medical drone deliveries in Dublin – its first operation in Ireland – and earlier in the month said was expanding existing activities with Walmart in Texas.
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