Infrastructure company Skyportz and property developer Pelligra are to explore jointly developing vertiport networks for air taxi and drone delivery services to Australia.

Skyportz CEO Clem Newton-Brown says: “We have strong policy support from the federal government and our air regulator CASA to develop advanced air mobility in Australia. The front runner electric air taxis will be certified to operate in the next couple of years. We now need the vertiport sites, and if Australia can establish a launch vertiport network we will be in a position to attract the first of these clean, green, quiet aircraft to Australian skies.”

The agreement builds on a previous partnership between Skyportz and other property owners such as Secure Parking, which has hundreds of inner city car parking sites.

“With the industrial and commercial property portfolio of Pelligra and the Secure Parking inner city car parking garages we can offer a comprehensive network of vertiport sites in any capital city in Australia,” says Newton-Brown.

“We are excited by this opportunity to build on the work that Skyportz has been doing for many years,” adds Pelligra CEO Ross Pelligra.

Pelligra is a third generation family business with an extensive portfolio of over 1,200 projects in Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and overseas.

“We are a nimble, privately owned company with a large portfolio of sites across Australia. In addition to vertiport sites we are passionate about developing a local manufacturing industry for eVTOL aircraft and serving as a base for the Asia Pacific market,” he continues.

Pelligra owns the former Holden and Ford manufacturing plants in Victoria and South Australia with plans to develop high tech hubs.

“We lost our local car manufacturing industry, and I would like to see Australia develop an electric air taxi manufacturing capability. The former car assembly plants would be perfect," says Pelligra.

The next step for the partnership is to focus their resources on a region or city that actively wants to be a world leader in advanced air mobility. Nowhere in the world has a vertiport network yet been set up but several European and American cities are well advanced in their planning.

“Skyportz has assembled the pieces of the puzzle. What we need now is to find a state and local governments that want to support the industry and the investment we want to make," says Newton-Brown.

US-based consultancy Nexa Capital has assessed the potential return on five use cases, in cities such as Melbourne, to be in excess of $5 billion in the first 20 years of operations.

“The key to this industry is breaking the nexus between aviation and existing airports. We need to develop a network of new vertiport sites if the industry is to reach its potential, and Skyportz is readying the landscape to partner with infrastructure partners such as Pelligra,” says Newton-Brown.