Nearly every drone industry in the world has enjoyed a significant expansion since 2022.  The Scandinavian industry, especially Norway, though still fairly small, is no exception.  Two major drone companies, Nordic Unmanned, founded in 2013  and a three-year old start-up, Aviant, are poised to make major gains in 2023-2024.  Each is expanding into new commercial niches, exploring technology partnerships overseas. and in the case of Nordic Unmanned, establishing its first base in the lucrative American drone market, which accounts for 60% of drone revenues worldwide.

Aviant first got its start in emergency medical delivery services during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company delivered emergency blood plasma supplies and vaccines to difficult-to-reach communities in the country’s central heartland.  It has since expanded into fast food and small grocery items through its home delivery service known as Kyte.  The company has also received civilian aviation approval to start long-distance deliveries of prescription-based medicines in small towns and villages without the need for remote piloting.  Only a few other unmanned aerial supply companies, including Wing and Zipline, have established similar long-distance fully autonomous drone operations elsewhere.

“Our technology proved critical for rural healthcare services during the pandemic, where winter road closures meant our drones were the only link between COVID-19 test sites and laboratories in Central Norway.” company CEO Lars Erik Fagernæs said last week.  “Now, with the launch of Kyte and our funding from Innovation Norway, Luminar Ventures, and Bring Ventures, we are able to provide people in remote and hard-to-reach areas with the groceries and medical supplies they need, directly to their doorstep, with no traffic restrictions and minimal climate emissions.”

Aviant is actually a US-based company, co-founded by Fagernæs and two of his academic colleagues, Herman Øie Kolden, and Bernhard Paus Græsdal at MIT in Cambridge, MA in 2020.  From the start, Fagernæs’ design team has focused on developing unmanned aircraft that can fly well beyond the limited operating radius of  “last mile” delivery drones.  The company’s new Kyte drones can fly 100 kms. in a straight line across relatively unpopulated rural expanses, which translates into a radius of 30 kms for round trip deliveries in closer-in, suburban areas.  So far, Aviant has made more than 2,500 autonomous drone flights across a total of 35,000 kms in Norway as well as in neighboring Sweden.

Nordic Unmanned is a native Norwegian company with a robust autonomous delivery capacity but to date has bypassed the food and medical delivery market in favor of commercial applications in oil and gas, defense and other sectors.  The company manages six different subsidiaries, with operations in Germany, Belgium and Finland. Nordic Unmanned rightly views itself as a global drone technology leader.  In fact, some of its subsidiaries, including Air Robot, first began operating at the dawn of the drone age back in 2003 and 2005.  Its latest innovation is an unmanned helicopter drone that can fly continuously for 100 kms to deliver supplies to offshore oil and gas platforms. Like Aviant, the company will likely benefit from recently loosened European Union regulations that allow for autonomous Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) flights anywhere in the EU system.

2023 promises to be a big year for both companies.  Last September, Nordic Unmanned established an overseas base in Baltimore County, Maryland – its first foray into the lucrative US market.  The company chose that locale, in part because its CEO, a former military officer, attended school and taught courses at nearby Towson University. Aviant, meanwhile, has just received another major infusion of investment capital to establish a second base of operations for long-distance food and grocery deliveries – this time, to an estimated 20,000-30,00 vacation homes located on the Norwegian coast

Drones companies operating in Norway do have another major advantage over some of their European counterparts.  In recent years, the central government has become heavily involved in the promotion of the nation’s drone industry, with loosened regulatory rules and generous financial support.  Since 2016, the government has provided grants and funding for companies, research groups and universities to develop new drone technologies for civil, commercial and military use.  A consortium of private companies, dubbed “Drone Cluster Norway,” which includes Nordic Unmanned, also provides grants and support for a wide range of research projects related to drones and their technologies.

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