JetPak and Grasshopper exploring drone delivery potential in Nordics

Deep Dive

by Yves Le Marquand

9 July 2025

Grasshopper Air Mobility has agreed a deal with delivery firm Jetpak, marking the first time a European parcel logistics provider has partnered with a heavy-payload eVTOL drone developer.

The memorandum of understanding will see Grasshopper investigate Jetpak’s current operations across Sweden, identifying suitable business cases based on maximum payloads and ranges as well as consulting with existing customers.

“We are investigating whether our Grasshopper flight-drive heavy-cargo drone can be a suitable solution,” Jakob Saalfrank, founder and CEO of Grasshopper, tells us. “We are talking about transports from super-hubs to hubs [large consignments], or from hubs to packaging collection points [medium consignments], or hubs/collection points direct to consumer [single deliveries].”

For the last use case to be viable, multiple single deliveries will have to be bundled into a larger consignment that must be accessed by the end consumer without compromising the other deliveries.

Grasshopper is approaching the investigation with an open mind. Saalfrank says it could well be that the pair might not deploy flight-drive technology, instead coming up with other solutions such as combining drones, droneports and ground-driving drones.

Saalfrank adds that the partnership could see Jetpak pre-order a number of Grasshopper drones, with first deliveries expected in the 2030s.

The Grasshopper CEO says the Nordics have similar values to his company — a big focus on sustainability and automation.

“The Nordics value and invest a lot into sustainability and thus our collaboration aligns with the government’s and people’s mindset. Within Europe, the Nordics are also known as a region of smooth technological progress, implementing digitalisation and automation across all sectors from education, government, business and industry.”

Lastly, the vast landscape requires specialised long-distance drone technologies, he says. “Whereas the longest distance in Germany, for instance, is 876 km, in Sweden we are talking about 1,572 km. There are many rural and sparsely populated stretches of land where distribution is slow, costly and inefficient.

“Furthermore, the cold climate conditions will require specialised drone technology to cope with harsh winds and low temperatures.”

Grasshopper has hit several milestones so far, including its internal preliminary design review (PDR), which led to the company publishing its design in November 2024. In May, the firm onboarded its first investors and, with that funding, is building a small prototype which it aims to use as a demonstrator.

The company is currently fundraising its pre-seed round of €4.5m in order to build a 25% scale prototype by 2027. Saalfrank is aiming to have a full-scale prototype ready by 2028 and a commercial vehicle by 2029, with certification estimated by 2030 or 2031.