Delivery drone company Zipline has announced it has developed the ‘fastest delivery drone on earth’. It has also overhauled its own logistics and delivery service to enable it to expand around the world.

Zipline’s new drone flies further, faster and with more cargo than any previous machine built by the company. The improvements will also decrease the amount of time between the receipts of a drone delivery order and the launch of a flight from ten minutes to one, and increase the number of delivery flights each day from a Zipline distribution centre from 50 to 500. In addition the radius reach of each distribution centre will be increased to serve up to ten million people.

Zipline’s new delivery vehicle is an autonomous fixed-wing style aeroplane capable of flying at a top speed of 128 km/h, and a cruising speed of 101 km/h—21 km/h faster than the previous generation of aircraft—with a round trip range of 160 kilometres carrying up to 1.75 kilos of cargo. The new plane is capable of flying four times faster than the average quadcopter drone and can serve an area 200 times as large.

“Our first generation aircraft and logistics system allowed us to create the first and only drone delivery service in the world, which is helping to save lives in Rwanda every day,” said Zipline chief executive Keller Rinaudo. “We’ve taken everything Zipline has learned making thousands of life-critical deliveries and flying hundreds of thousands of kilometres and redesigned our entire system and operation from top to bottom.

“The new aircraft and distribution centre system we’re unveiling today will help Zipline scale to meet the needs of countries around the world—including the United States.”