A logistics and courier company on Tuesday said it had carried what it said was Türkiye’s first intercontinental cargo delivery by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

A drone successfully completed a cargo delivery between Çubuklu and Emirgan over the Bosporus, Yurtiçi Kargo said in a statement.

The company says it has accelerated its autonomous investments since 2020 and engaged in the drone transport sector after inaugurating what it says is Türkiye's largest automated transfer center and smart cargo lockers.

The UAV system used by Yurtiçi Kargo and produced by a local company, DeliveryOne, is integrated with its smart cargo lockers, it said.

The standard operating procedure begins when the courier loads the shipment intended for faster delivery into the UAV locker and selects a destination locker from the smart screens.

The cargo loaded in the locker is measured by systems inside the locker and is raised to the UAV runway on the top of the locker. Flying between the lockers, the UAV lands on the locker as soon as it receives a delivery order, loads the cargo autonomously and delivers it to the other location within minutes.

Fahrettin Hamzaoğlu, deputy general manager of Yurtiçi Kargo Cargo Operations, stated that autonomous investments will not be limited to this project. He said they would continue to work on scenarios where they can carry out the whole process with autonomous vehicles.

"We continue our efforts to include the entire process from the point where the shipments are received from our customers' warehouse to the point where they are delivered to the recipient via a fully automated system."

He said while continuing their investments in UAVs, they are also upgrading work on unmanned land vehicles.

"We believe you will start seeing our unmanned land vehicles and even robot communications very soon. We will introduce this technology to the cargo industry very soon. We are proceeding with great care to digitize the entire process and reduce our carbon footprint," said Hamzaoğlu.

He stated that they also invested in electric cargo distribution vehicles apart from autonomous technologies.

"Currently, we have the largest electric cargo distribution fleet in Türkiye. We have approximately 300 electric vehicles serving our citizens in the city and tens of thousands of cargo shipments are delivered to their buyers every day thanks to these vehicles."

"Our goal in this regard is to gradually start using electric vehicles in our intercity operations, as technology advances and enables it. We will see electric cargo vehicles with the Yurtiçi Kargo logo on our highways in the coming years," he added.