Zipline is deploying the world’s fastest delivery drone to save more lives and lower cost
Keller Rinaudo, Founder and CEO of Zipline has announced that the company which deploys drones to deliver blood for transfusion in Rwanda is now responsible for more than 20% of the country’s national blood supply outside the country’s capital city of Kigali.
All of this progress is possible because we have been operating an automated logistics system at national scale for the last 18 months, delivering over 20% of the national blood supply of Rwanda outside the capital. 4,000 commercial deliveries done by the zipline team.
Zipline has already flown some 300,000 kilometers and it has also launched a similar operation in Tanzania.
Announcing the company’s new product, the CEO said it is the fastest delivery drone in the world which will allow Zipline’s distribution centers to go from 50 to 500 deliveries per day, saving lives and saving cost.
“All of this progress is possible because we have been operating an automated logistics system at national scale for the last 18 months, delivering over 20% of the national blood supply of Rwanda outside the capital. 4,000 commercial deliveries done by an amazing team,” Rinaudo said.
In October 2016, zipline made its first delivery to a hospital and since then it has made more deliveries and had attracted attention from across the world. The company now has a national drone delivery system to ship blood and drugs to remote medical centers in Rwanda.
This would be aided by the company’s world’s swiftest commercial delivery drone, with a top speed of 128 kilometers an hour.
“The biggest thing we learned is that speed is everything. We’ve shown that this technology can save lives abroad; now we’re going to show that it can save lives in the US too,” Rinaudo said.