No, that’s not a plane at your front door – that’s your groceries being delivered by a drone.
Woolworths at Peninsula Plaza Woy Woy is proposing to start home deliveries by going into business with Zipline drones.
It’s the first time the two companies have collaborated for home deliveries – meaning Woy Woy could be their first site if applications with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) get approved.
Customers will place an order through the Woolworths “on-demand proposition”.
Prompts in the Woolworths on-demand system will decide if the order will be delivered by drone.
Zipline workers will pick up the order once it has been filled by Woolies staff and repack the items into a box specially engineered for Zipline drone delivery.
They will perform weight and balance quality checks on the package.
And then the Zipline staff will launch the drone from the roof of Peninsula Plaza.
It is not clear from the development application (DA) recently lodged with Central Coast Council if the parcel will be parachuted or delivered by zipline to customers.
The DA talks of “airdropping”.
Coast Community News has asked both the applicant, SLR Consulting, and Woolworths for clarification.
The overall traffic and parking demands at Peninsula Plaza will be reduced, Zipline says in the DA, because the drone delivery service will provide customers with an alternative to ‘top up’ trips, meaning they can stay at home.
While Central Coast Council is the consent authority for renovations to the roof of Peninsula Plaza, CASA will be the consent authority for the commercial drone operation.
Zipline has applied for a Remotely Piloted Aircraft Operator’s Certificate (ReOC), which allows a business to trade as a drone service provider and says CASA has confirmed the application is under review.
Zipline estimates the ReOC will be granted this month.
It also needs an Area Approval for a specific geographic area in which it will routinely fly.
“In the case of the Woolworths partnership, the first area approval will be for a defined area around the Woolworths store in Woy Woy, Central Coast,” the application says.
“Zipline’s area approval application will include a concept of operations (CONOPS), manuals, personnel training curriculum, and risk assessment for the proposed area detailing the various technological and operational controls, mitigations and procedures used to minimise the severity and probability of hazards the operation could pose to people and property on the ground and other airspace users.
“It will also include applications for specific authorisations that are more tightly regulated because they are not considered within the scope of standard operating conditions, such as flying the drones beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS), flying over people, airdropping packages in flight, and having multiple autonomous drones monitored in flight by a single Zipline flight controller.”
Zipline aims to submit its Area Approval application to CASA between March and April.
Under the Air Navigation (Aircraft Noise) Regulations 2018, Zipline is also required to obtain a noise approval from the Federal Government’s Department of Infrastructure addressing the noise created by its drones in all phases of flight including launch, delivery, hold amd recovery.
“Zipline has briefed Dept. Infrastructure on its Q4 2024 launch timeline with Woolworths and remains actively engaged with the agency,” Zipline said.
The physical infrastructure to be built on the roof of the Plaza will be “strategically located on the northeastern corner of the rooftop so as to cause minimal impact in terms of visual impact”, the DA says.
“The centre point of the drone recovery structure is 19.8m from the northern edge of the building and 11.9m from the eastern edge of the building.
“Given these significant setbacks from the roof edge, already being 7.6m high, the proposed works should not be visible from ground level on site,” the application says.
“It is acknowledged they will be visible from a distance at Woy Woy Oval.”
The application says nothing about any trees in nearby Austin Butler Reserve being affected.
The Woy Woy peninsula community recently battled with Council to retain a section of the reserve in community ownership after Peninsula Plaza had approached Council to buy a section to expand its car park.
The Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure planning guidelines for drones says it is an emerging technology already used in several locations in Australia.
“These services are expected to become more common as technology, regulatory frameworks and the drone industry continue to mature,” the guidelines say.
“For the purpose of this document, the department has adopted the following definition of drone delivery services:
“The use of drones weighing less than 25kg to deliver small packages (including, but not limited to, medical supplies, pathology samples, small goods and consumables) to customers from a local delivery hub.
“As the market evolves, it is expected that drone delivery services will operate at greater scale and complexity, with operations taking place from dedicated hubs over a sustained period.”
The department says the definition may be reviewed in the future as the scale of drone operations Increase.
Coast Community News will provide updates when more information comes to hand.
Merilyn Vale
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