Following the announcement at the Air Taxi World Congress in Turkey last month of its plan to develop the world’s first modular vertiport, Australia-based advanced air mobility infrastructure developer Skyportz is to fundraise to develop its first prototype.

Skyportz claims to have amassed options on more sites than any other vertiport company in the world. The company has focused on first building a property database of site options, now numbering in the many hundreds in Australia.

“It doesn’t matter how good your IP is, or how advanced your designs are, if you don’t have access to vertiport sites to build a cohesive network then you can never be a vertiport operator,” says CEO and founder Clem Newton-Brown.

Skyportz’s first in depth assessment, site analysis and design of a vertiport in the Caribbean Business Park in Melbourne was completed this year with input from partners Arup, To70 Aviation and Contreras Earl Architecture.

“We are finalising the design of a smaller, modular vertiport with the same flowing design by Raphael Contreras, former lead designer with Zaha Hadid. This fundraise will enable us to to fine tune our design and build our first prototype and then take it to the world,” he adds. “Rather than going down the path of venture capital we are pursuing a novel retail fundraise using Birchal, a regulated crowdfunding platform. There is so much excitement around this emerging industry, particularly amongst young people, and we want to give people the opportunity to invest small amounts into our business.”

Newton-Brown is anticipating that Skyportz will take on a major equity partner when the the rules and regulations enable the construction of a vertiport network.

“We intend to break the nexus between aviation and airports, which is the key to electric air taxis fulfilling their true potential,” he concludes.