An aerial drone startup headquartered in downtown Hartford says it has begun manufacturing activities in the center city and is significantly increasing its workforce as a result.
Aquiline Drones, founded in 2019 by commercial pilot Barry Alexander, said it has recently hired 25 technicians to assemble two types of drones as well as a smart camera, and plans to hire another 25 people in the coming weeks.
That’ll be up from 15 employees about a year ago.
Aquiline aims to seize on a government-spurred push for domestic drone manufacturing. The U.S. Department of Justice last October officially banned the use of DOJ funds for drones from China, which is a major drone maker.
“Growing data security concerns over foreign-manufactured technology, mainly from China, has created an immediate need for increased drone production capacity in the United States,” said Alexander, who is chairman and CEO. “Our goal is to not only position our country as a leader in the multi-billion-dollar global drone industry, but also, to reestablish America’s manufacturing dominance. This is in perfect harmony with our company’s powerful strategic vision of making Connecticut the drone capital of the nation.”
The drone production is taking place at Aquiline’s Stark Building headquarters, where it signed a lease about a year ago for the 16th and 17th floors.
The manufacturing operation is using nearly half of Aquiline’s 15,000 square feet of space in the building.
Alexander had planned to open a separate manufacturing facility, but said housing the activity on site ended up making more sense.
“To quickly scale our commercial drone production capacity, our team decided to consolidate all manufacturing operations at our downtown Hartford headquarters to avoid the logistical challenges of managing a separate facility,” he said.
Under a licensing agreement secured last year with a French drone maker called Drone Volt, Aquiline is producing and selling that company’s Altura Zenith and Hercules 2 drones, rebranded as the Spartacus Macks and Spartacus Hurricane, respectively. Aquiline will also make Drone Volt’s Pensar smart camera, which can be mounted on drones.
Under its deal with the publicly traded Drone Volt, which was disclosed in regulatory filings, Aquiline is responsible for investments, operating costs and production of the drones and will pay Drone Volt 10% of the proceeds from U.S. sales.
Drone Volt will also be able to tap up to 25% of Aquiline’s production capacity to meet the needs of its customers outside of the U.S.
Besides the licensing arrangement, Aquiline and Drone Volt late last year conducted an equity swap that gave each company an approximately 10% share in the other.
