Photo credit: Zipline

Retail giant Walmart has announced that it’s teamed up with Zipline, a medical drone delivery upstart, to kickstart a drone delivery operation in the U.S. state of Arkansas, where Walmart is headquartered. Under their partnership, Walmart will trial drone deliveries of select health and wellness products to customers within a 50-mile radius of a specific Walmart store that’s close to the company’s headquarters. Walmart plans to use Zipline drones to deliver health and wellness items to customers in under an hour after an order its placed. Along with quick delivery, Walmart is also aiming to adopt drone deliveries as part of its sustainability and clean energy efforts.

Zipline, which operates one of the world’s major drone delivery networks, makes use of small, electric-powered drones to deliver items. The company began operating in the African nation of Rwanda since 2016 and has since then undertaken deliveries of more than 200,000 medical products to health facilities. Basically, Zipline will use its drones to facilitate deliveries for Walmart, which is apparently seeking innovative ways to further its retail business in the face of increasing competition from other retailers and e-commerce companies, most notably Amazon. Amazon itself began trialing drone deliveries back in 2016 and just in August obtained approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate a fleet of delivery drones.

The video below demonstrates a Zipline drone delivery for a product ordered from a Walmart store;

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