Yamaha Motor and YAMABIKO to Develop and Sell Agricultural Drones by 2018

Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. (hereinafter, Yamaha Motor) and YAMABIKO CORPORATION (hereinafter, YAMABIKO) have agreed to form an alliance regarding the joint development and commercialization for agricultural chemical spraying systems using multi-rotor drones.

Yamaha Motor, which manufactures and sells unmanned helicopters for spraying agricultural chemicals, and YAMABIKO, which manufactures a comprehensive range of compact agricultural machinery, will work together to leverage each other’s know-how in the joint development of agricultural chemical spraying systems using multi-rotor drones. These new drones will be compatible with a wide variety of chemical delivery formats, including liquids and granules, and product launches are scheduled from 2018.

By bringing together Yamaha Motor’s product development and quality assurance strengths as well as its sales and service network together with YAMABIKO’s pest control technology and Japan-wide agricultural machinery sales network, the two companies aim to expand sales in the industrial drone market, in which demand has been growing in recent years.

Yamaha Motor released an unmanned helicopter for spraying agricultural chemicals in 1989, and its Japan domestic market share of pest control spraying areas is currently 42.5% of staple food rice paddy rice fields (2016 results, Yamaha Motor data). The Company is actively expanding use in agricultural applications globally, including Korea, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand. Outside of agricultural applications, there are also industrial unmanned helicopters for multi-solutions capable of long-range automatic navigation providing advanced services to government agencies and general enterprises, etc. in a wide range of industrial fields such as vegetation surveillance and measurement work, disaster prevention, and disaster support.

Since YAMABIKO’s predecessor company Kyoritsu Noki launched a rice paddy pest control agricultural chemical sprayer in 1948, YAMABIKO has accumulated pest control technology over many years which delivers efficient spraying of agricultural chemicals. Based on its founding principle of “contributing to society through increasing food production,” YAMABIKO has developed agricultural pest control machinery which has played a major role in a wide range of agricultural regions, including rice paddies, farmland and orchards. From compact pest control machinery to large ride-on pest control machinery, YAMABIKO supplies products and services essential to continued stable food supply.