The EIC Accelerator Backed Avy's Medical Drone: Did It Work

In March 2020 the European Innovation Council picked an Amsterdam drone maker to solve a hospital logistics problem: blood bags, lab samples and urgent drugs stuck in traffic. Avy B.V. was one of the winners of the March 2020 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot, listed with a grant-only award for SkySaver, "the electric VTOL-fixed wing drone for urgent medical delivery", in the European Commission's list of selected companies. Avy is the only company named for the project. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €1,385,125 towards a total cost of €1,978,750, for a project that ran from 1 August 2020 to 31 July 2022.

The promise was concrete: a drone that could carry clinical specimens, blood, drugs and vaccines over up to 150 km, on average 30% faster than a road courier and 60% faster at rush hour. Six years on, Avy is still in business and still sells a winged electric drone. Its buyers, though, are mostly police forces, fire brigades, ports and research bodies, and the Dutch hospital drone network it helped test in 2020 now flies a competitor's aircraft.

Where Avy Stands Now

Avy is active. In April 2026 it launched Operator Services, flying missions itself and selling aerial photo and video data, starting with a multi-year contract worth €2.4 million for an unnamed client in the ports of Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Antwerp, according to an investor announcement on NPEX, the Dutch trading platform for small companies where Avy Group has listed convertible bonds. The same month it named Coptrz its exclusive UK partner for emergency services and defence, and in February 2026 it signed with Droniq, a joint venture of German air traffic control provider DFS and Deutsche Telekom, to offer its drones for long-range flights in Germany. The company register shows no insolvency: North Data lists balance sheets for Avy B.V. and Avy Group B.V. up to 31 December 2025, both published on 2 September 2026.

The leadership changed at the end of 2024. Benjamin van der Hilst, who joined in 2017 and was chief product officer, succeeded founder Patrique Zaman as chief executive on 1 December 2024, according to DroneLife and Avy's February 2025 investor report. Zaman stayed on the board. In December 2025 an Avy drone was flown for King Willem-Alexander, Queen Máxima and Finland's president at the Amsterdam Drone Lab, where Zaman said Avy drones were in operational use with the Dutch police, coastguard and fire service and with one user in Finland, according to Avy's announcement.

The Technology: A Drone That Lands Like a Helicopter and Flies Like a Plane

Most delivery and camera drones are multicopters: easy to launch and land anywhere, but short on range because their rotors carry the full weight the whole time. Fixed-wing drones fly much further on the same battery but need a runway or a catapult. Avy's Aera combines both: it takes off and lands vertically, then flies on its wing. The current version carries a parachute for flights over built-up areas and recharges automatically in a docking station, so it can launch with no crew on site, according to DroneLife and Avy's own medical delivery page.

The published specifications vary. The Droniq announcement of February 2026 gives up to 100 km of range, up to 75 minutes of flight and up to 3 kg of payload. Avy's medical page gives 100 km per charge, 3 kg and a cruise speed of 100 km/h, while its company summary gives 130 km, or 150 km with a long-range battery, at a cruise speed of 83 km/h. The 2021 version described on Wikipedia carried 1.5 kg. The SkySaver target of 150 km is therefore met only in the company's own long-range figure.

What SkySaver Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The CORDIS report lists four technical outputs: an upscaled, regulation-compliant electric VTOL airframe, a "global sense and avoid system", a cold-chain medical payload box and a docking station. In the first year Avy finished the detailed airframe design and produced most composite parts, built a prototype cargo box and a first docking station, and dropped hardware detect-and-avoid in favour of software that avoids other aircraft using transponder or traffic management data. The report filed for the second period, August 2021 to July 2022, repeats the first-period text word for word, so CORDIS holds no account of how the project ended.

The closing account came instead in a CORDIS news feature. It says the project raised payload and range, produced the Avy Medkit cargo box and "succeeded in building an airworthy cargo drone", while "there's still more work to be done, particularly as to the payload capacity". It says the drone would "soon be used to deliver medical supplies between hospitals in the Netherlands" and that beyond-visual-line-of-sight flights were still being worked on. The next aircraft generation, the Aera 4, was due for production in summer 2023 and arrived "almost 9 months later than scheduled", Avy told investors in March 2024; prototypes then needed a further redesign, its August 2024 report says.

1. Upscaled eVTOL airframeLateAirworthy drone by 2022 but heavier than planned; the Aera 4 came about 9 months late.
2. Global sense and avoid systemNot achievedCut back to transponder and traffic data software; no such system announced.
3. Cold-chain medical cargo boxDeliveredAvy Medkit, per CORDIS; insulated payload bay on Avy's medical page.
4. Docking stationDeliveredSold with the Aera as a drone-in-a-box system, per Droniq and Avy.
5. Clients flying urgent medical deliveries, 30% to 60% faster than roadNot achievedNo named hospital customer; the Dutch medical drone service flies a RigiTech drone.
6. Final project reportThinSecond-period report repeats the first.

The Medical Market It Was Funded For

Avy's main route into hospital logistics was the Medical Drone Service, a partnership of ANWB, PostNL, Erasmus MC, Isala, Sanquin, Certe, Avy and KPN. In November 2020 an Avy drone began test flights between Isala's sites in Meppel and Zwolle, carrying no medical goods, to gather data until mid-2021, DroneXL reported. In May 2021 the Avy Aera became the aircraft of Botswana's Drones for Health pilot with the health ministry, BIUST university and the UN Population Fund, according to DroneDJ and Wikipedia. Avy's 2023 bond prospectus still put medical logistics first among its two markets, but said that at that moment it had "slechts zeer beperkt concrete orders" (only very limited firm orders).

The Dutch hospital drone network now flies another maker's aircraft. In February 2024 the Medical Drone Service took on a RigiTech Eiger drone to open new routes, according to eVTOL Insights. ANWB, which flies the Meppel to Zwolle hospital trial that began on 22 September 2025, says it flies "een drone van leverancier RigiTech, een zogenaamde Eiger 3". In August 2026 ANWB extended the trial to mid-2027 after more than 800 flights carrying medication and blood samples. Neither ANWB page, nor Maakindustrie's report on the trial's launch, mentions Avy.

Avy's medical page says the Aera flies authorised corridor routes between healthcare facilities in the Netherlands, without naming the client, and claims deliveries in Benin up to 65% faster than by road. Neither claim could be verified from a second source. Avy's own investor reports describe the customer base differently: police, fire brigades, the Port of Rotterdam, the Royal Netherlands Navy, ProRail, the security firm Trigion and the aerospace research centre NLR, which bought an Aera in January 2025.

The Money

The EIC grant carried the company through the project years. Avy B.V. booked €147,016 of "EIC subsidy" as revenue in 2020 and €920,209 in 2021, when it made up most of its €1,097,167 revenue, according to its 2021 accounts. Avy's bond prospectus lists the 2020 award as a "€ 2.2M grant", while CORDIS records an EU contribution of €1,385,125. No explanation for the difference was found.

After the grant ended, sales did not fill the gap. Group revenue fell from €961,118 in 2022 to €654,928 in 2023, partly because subsidy income dropped from €343k to €68k "because a large subsidized project ended in 2022", and partly because the Aera 4 was late. The 2023 loss was €2.96 million. Avy B.V.'s 2023 accounts show €4,083 in cash at year end, negative equity of €3,876,652 and 41 full-time staff on average, up from 32 in 2022. Between December 2023 and January 2024 the team was cut from about 45 to about 30 FTE.

Revenue recovered to €1,116,915 in 2024, though still with a net loss of €2.24 million. The balance sheet was repaired by converting more than €7 million of shareholder and investor loans into shares, and NPEX convertible bonds raised €1.066 million in total, the February 2025 report says. It also describes a €4 million convertible loan agreement with two angel investors, of which €1 million had been paid in, and due diligence by Invest-NL for a possible €10 million round; no completed round of that size has been announced. Avy estimated it needed about €7 million to reach a positive EBITDA. The 2025 accounts and the investor reports from 2025 onwards sit behind a login on NPEX, which also lists conversion notices from September 2025 and October 2026, so the latest figures could not be checked.

Why Europe Should Care

The EU's Drone Strategy 2.0, adopted on 29 November 2022, expects "urgent delivery of small consignments, such as biological samples or medicines" by 2030 and puts the drone services market at €14.5 billion and 145,000 jobs by then, according to the European Commission. It also aims to "reduce existing strategic dependencies". Avy pitches itself on that point: the Coptrz deal is meant to support "sovereign, non-Chinese drone supply chains", and its royal demonstration was framed around a "drone wall" for Finland's border with Russia. A European maker of long-range drones that are designed and built in Amsterdam fits that agenda. But the medical use case SkySaver was funded for is where Avy has the least to show in public, and the Dutch medical trial that the strategy's goals describe is being flown with another company's drone.

The Verdict

Avy has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.