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Skyportz reveals modular design for Australia’s first electric air taxi vertiport.
At the recent AAUS annual Advanced Air Mobility summit in Melbourne, Skyportz, a Melbourne-based start-up showcased its new modular-designed vertiport.
Skyportz announced their first Australian partnership with Caribbean Park, a recently established business precinct outside of the Melbourne CBD. It’s anticipated the vertiport will serve Australia’s emerging electric air taxi industry from that launch location.
Skyportz and Caribbean Park have further collaborated with Sydney-based Contreras Earl Architects, to70 aviation (an aviation consultancy), ARUP and Microflite (a Victorian-based helicopter charter company) to develop a design that meets the necessary operational requirements to serve as a vertiport for Advanced Air Mobility.
The vertiport modular design had been created with export opportunities in mind as, “these beautiful sculptural buildings can be deployed in components packed into shipping containers anywhere in the world”.
Skyportz’s CEO is well-known Melbourne identity, Clem Newton-Brown, who’s CV includes having practised as a barrister, state politician, and former Deputy Lord Mayor of Melbourne.
At the congress Clem Newton-Brown said it was urgent that the property industry and policy makers enable vertiport networks to be established.
“The frontrunners have had over $10 billion invested into aircraft development in the last year, and this investment needs to be doubled down into vertiport infrastructure if the business cases are to be realised. There is no point developing these aircraft if they can’t land in new locations.”
“Skyportz is offering the property industry a chance to get on the front foot and install these lightweight, affordable vertiports in advance of being able to actually use them,” he said.
On launching their modular design,Rafael Contreras, Director of Contreras Earl Architecture, said, “We are proud to have designed Australia’s first vertiport – a beautiful, sculptural, ground-breaking terminal that contributes to the evolution of architecture and to the future of our communities and cities.
“We founded Contreras Earl Architecture to design original, inventive buildings like Skyportz, as we believe architecture and technology should evolve together. Using advanced technology, we developed an efficient modular design made with recyclable aluminium. The system is lightweight, prefabricated and assembled on site, so that it can be adapted and configured for a broad range of settings and scaled for mass production.”
The company also announced at the World Air Taxi Congress in Istanbul, Turkey that it had now opened its property partner database to accept registrations anywhere in the world from potential vertiport locations.
Skyportz is currently looking for investment partners to support the funding of the Caribbean Park vertiport’s construction, set to be the first in a stable of vertiports throughout Australia.
