ALTI UAS - Company of the Year - Aerospace & Defense

Company: ALTI Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Knysna
Company Division/Group: ALTI UAS (Pty) Ltd
Company Description: ALTI Unmanned Aircraft Systems has been identified as Africa's premier and largest commercial UAV manufacturer and was born as a new division of and brand of SteadiDrone, established in 2012. ALTI was founded by our Director, Duran de Villiers, and has a small team of 20 dedicated employees. ALTI operates out of two facilities, manufacturing office, and head office, out of Knysna, South Africa.
Nomination Category: Company / Organization Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Company of the Year - Aerospace & Defense - Small

Nomination Title: ALTI Unmanned Aircraft Systems

ALTI is an industry-leading unmanned aircraft manufacturing company, based in Knysna, South Africa, with a focus on ultra-long endurance vertical take-off and landing unmanned aircraft. ALTI is a new division and brand from the highly successful drone manufacturer SteadiDrone, which has been exporting its products around the world since 2012 having sold over 1000 drones internationally.

ALTI was born out of the need to increase endurance while retaining the ability to operate from very confined areas without the need for a runway for take-off and landings. A brand-new vehicle had to be developed from the ground up and thus the ALTI Transition was created and started shipping out in early 2017. Two additional models have also been developed, a smaller ALTI Ascend and a much larger ALTI Reach, strengthening ALTI’s offering of a complete fleet of VTOL aircraft with best-in-class and affordable highly competitive pricing to match.

ALTI offers the most advanced VTOL (vertical take-off and land) unmanned aircraft systems available, with nearly a decade of manufacturing, 3D printing, rapid prototyping and sales experience, in-house engineering as well as software development. We are currently the largest commercial drone manufacturer in Africa.

With 50+ units sold and shipped the ALTI Transition is flying with clients in South America, the USA, France, Romania, Africa, Indonesia, Thailand, the Middle East, and more. Sales are growing rapidly as well as the demand for our aircraft fleet, support, and training along with our upcoming product ranges, this has been a continuous process even through the difficult C-19 times.

ALTI is a 100% privately owned company, grown organically from the ground up, profitable from day one with zero investment or funding taken to date. With well over 100 million Rand in revenue in the first short few years and an estimated turnover of around 50 Million for the current financial year alone. ALTI has doubled its revenue for the previous two three years running and is well on track to double this yet again for 2020.

ATLI has a very strong national and international presence, brand, and identity, which has been built up over the last nearly 10 years. With marketing across all the popular social media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, as well as Google Ads, Analytics, and the ALTI Website itself. We consistently rank top of the first page on Google, have a highly active social media posting schedule, and do monthly blogs, videos, and more. ALTI also started and manage Africa’s largest drone community page on Facebook, Drones South Africa.

When looking at many other similar companies in this dynamic, ever-changing industry, it is clear that all of them started with an enormous amount of funding and investment into their growth and technology, which would have been great assets to them, as it allows for bigger teams, more capital to acquire stock & components needed, etc.

As ALTI did not have any third-party funding or investment capital to grow and develop their aircraft, it is a great achievement to see how far they have come. Even without any additional capital, ALTI has managed to design, develop & manufacture an industry-leading long-endurance unmanned aircraft, that can outperform any of its competitors.

From ALTI's inception, they have used whatever resources were available to them, and started developing all components needed to complete and improve the aircraft in-house. Spending the capital they had to acquire the machines needed to get the job done, and upskilling the people already there to save costs on expanding before they were able to accommodate employees.

This is a strength for ALTI, and also part of what allows them to build such an advanced system at a reasonable cost. ALTI has a team of up 20 employees who build these advanced aircraft and work closely together to ensure the high quality and success of each aircraft that leaves the manufacturing facility.

The ALTI Unmanned Aircraft Systems brand & image has been built on proving their capabilities and going up against other bigger players within the drone industry.