Zipline mark’s 5 yrs of medical drone service delivery
***** Surpasses 200,000 deliveries
By Abisola THOMPSON
A national-scale drone delivery service, Zipline, says it is celebrating five years in flight since its launch of blood deliveries in Rwanda in 2016.
Keller Rinaudo, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, said in a statement on Thursday that the company, which on average makes a delivery every four minutes, recently surpassed 200,000 commercial deliveries.
According to him, this marks a significant acceleration over the last year, after Zipline spent its first four years building to 100,000 deliveries.
“We set out five years ago with a goal to come as close to teleportation as possible—a goal many people found crazy at the time.
“Since then, we’ve shown not just that automated, on-demand delivery can work, but also that it can transform systems like healthcare to make them more resilient—and we are just getting started,” he said.
He said the company has completed 37,000 emergency deliveries and transported more than four million doses of medical products, including 90,000 units of blood products and 3.5 million vaccine doses.
According to him, In recent months, the company has significantly expanded its footprint in Africa, signing new partnerships with Cross River and Kaduna States in Nigeria.
He said the company waa closing an agreement to double its presence in Ghana to be capable of serving 90 per cent of the country’s population.
He said the company had also played an integral role in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, launching the first and only national-scale UAS delivery for COVID-19 vaccines.
“To date, Zipline has delivered more than 170,000 doses across Ghana. The company has also partnered with Pfizer to develop and test an end-to-end delivery solution for cold chain products.
“All told, Zipline has delivered millions of products to nearly 2,000 healthcare facilities,” he said.
Keenan Wyrobek, co-founder and CTO of Zipline, said the company, over the last five years, established instant logistics infrastructure that was more practical, sustainable and scalable than anything that came before.
“The 200,000 deliveries we’ve made over nearly 15 million miles of flight is a powerful testament to what we’ve built—and we are just getting started. I can’t wait to share what is next,” he said.
Zipline is the global instant logistics leader. Our purpose is to inspire possibility, transform systems and serve all people equally.
” We design, manufacture and operate the world’s largest automated on-demand delivery service, which to date has made more than 200,000 commercial deliveries.
Zipline is the trusted partner for governments, global brands and leading health care systems.
For more information about Zipline, visit flyzipline.com.
