As part of the agreement, Geoforma will operate Delair's first service centres on the ground in Latin America, expanding the company's international network of sales and support.

Delair has made strong inroads into the Latin American market, with a line of commercial UAV platforms aimed at specific markets, including mining. Through the expanded agreement with Geoforma, which has provided sales support for Delair for two years, customers in Mexico will have a service operation to assist with repair, maintenance, training and operational optimisation.

The service centre is located in Mexico City and will offer certified repair and maintenance services, as well as on-line and call support to Delair customers.

Delair worked with Geoforma technicians to certify them on the latest maintenance and repairs processes required to optimise the operations of its UX11 drone. The training took place at Delair's main manufacturing facility and company headquarters in Toulouse, France. Delair also worked with Geoforma to ensure it has a sufficient inventory of parts and spares, as well as the required tooling to perform repair and maintenance on the specific Delair UAV models.

"Geoforma has distinguished itself as a highly reliable and service-oriented supplier to commercial drone users in key industries in the Mexico market," said Stefanie David, channel marketing manager at Delair. "Their expertise and professionalism are great assets for us as we expand further into Latin America, and it's important that our customers in this region have access to local expert service and support so we can we minimise downtime when their drones require maintenance or repairs.

"Having a team of trained and qualified technicians like Geoforma on the ground in Mexico will ensure a much more efficient service process and reduce the amount of time that our customers' drones are out of operation due to either routine maintenance or damage from operations."

All of Delair's solutions are designed to make it easy for enterprises to adopt commercial drones, from hardware to data acquisition services and data processing software. This integrated approach enables industrial enterprises to automatically collect the aerial intelligence, analyse it and quickly integrate it into their daily business processes, with immediate return on investment.

"The Delair solution is an ideal fit for many of our customers looking for high-performance, long-range aerial data collection and surveying capabilities," said Carlos Chavez, sales manager at Geoforma. "We see a lot of interest in industries such as mining, construction, energy and the government sector. Going through the very detailed training at Delair's facility in France was a valuable experience and we feel well-prepared to provide front-line service and repair services for the UX11."

The Delair UX11 UAV, introduced commercially last year, is one of Delair's top-of-the-line drones. The fixed-wing drone is a hardware-software platform that provides accurate images for survey-grade mapping, with on-board processing capabilities and real-time, long-range control via 3G/4G cellular networks or radio links. The platform's enhanced centimetre-level precision along with its efficient operational characteristics make it an excellent solution for large area surveying and mapping.