Droneshield finally scores European DroneGun order after COVID-19 delays

The first DroneShield DroneGun is officially on its way to Europe, under a deal first struck last year.

Rather than make drones, DroneShield (ASX:DRO) designs weapons and systems to defend against them.

Back in May 2020, DRO announced that its DroneGun Tactical product had won a tender as the preferred solution for European Union (EU) police forces.

DroneShield DroneGun

Although it looks more like a futuristic weapon designed to incinerate enemy drones out of the sky, the DroneGun works by scrambling the controller-inputs on airborne drones to render them incapacitated.

At the time, DRO said its DroneGun win would provide a platform to sell more products across multiple EU jurisdictions.

However, difficulties around logistics due to the impact of the COVID-19 health pandemic haven’t made things easy.

But eight months after the deal was struck, DroneShield has put some runs on the board.

The company announced that the first Droneshield DroneGun order has been booked under the European Union Police Framework Agreement, to the value of around $100,000.

While that revenue figure is “small”, CEO Oleg Vornik said he expects some good things to arise out of this contract.

“Due to COVID-19, there have been initial delays in mobilisation of orders under the agreement, which have now commenced despite continuous COVID constraints in Europe,” he said.

It marks the first of “what we expect to be a multi-million dollar agreement” supplying not just DroneGuns, but other drone-defence technologies within DRO’s product suite, to different police forces across the EU.

The smaller $100,000 follows on from a separate $400,000 DroneGun order the company announced at the end of last year, to an as-yet unnamed country within the Five Eyes security allegiance (US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK).

Despite the effect of the pandemic, DRO chipped away with a number of global sales deals last year.

Those included a separate deal with a government customer in south-east Asia for its DroneSentry system, from which it flagged potential revenues of $1m.

While the company continues to bring a relatively consistent level of deal-flow announcements to market, investors are still looking for bigger hits.

Shares in DRO edged slightly higher in morning trade today to 18c, but the stock is still yet to make a meaningful run at its 2019 highs of around 45c.