High street retailer Wilko has invested £3m in UK autonomous delivery company StreetDrone.

The investment will give the retailer a significant interest in the company, and should put it at the forefront of investments in retail technology in the fast-growing autonomous vehicles industry.

The investment, which is part of a wider multi-million-pound pre-series A round, will enable StreetDrone to accelerate the development of its autonomous delivery vehicle and systems.

The investment forms a core element of Wilko’s long-term strategy to strengthen its omnichannel model, in line with the ever-changing customer behaviour that has been accelerated during the pandemic.

Founded in 1930, Wilko is a UK-based retail chain that sells homewares and household goods. It has more than 400 stores nationwide and a turnover over £1.2bn. It stocks over 200,000 products in its stores and on its ecommerce site with more than 14,000 of them being Wilko branded

Wilko’s ambition is ultimately to provide shoppers with access to digitally-enabled services, including autonomous retail deliveries, that will enhance their experience and make it easier for them to access the products they need for homes and gardens.

StreetDrone is aiming to deploy driverless delivery vehicles on the UK’s roads by the end of 2023 and is working with UK-based vehicle safety agencies on defining the standards by which these technologies will be allowed to operate on public roads.

“We are delighted to have the support of a major UK retailer,” said Mike Potts, CEO of StreetDrone. “Wilko will help us realise our aim of bringing autonomous last-mile services to UK and European roads, to the benefit of both retailers and consumers. Our technology, aligned with Wilko’s determined strategy to enrich the lives of its customers, is the perfect fusion of our capability and their requirement.”

As part of the investment, Jonathan Griffin, director of Wilkinson Future, will sit on the firm’s board, and oversee the investment on behalf of Wilko.

“We were very excited when we met StreetDrone and would have happily added them directly to our portfolio of young businesses,” said Griffin. “However, it is even better that Wilko shared that view and I look forward to supporting them and seeing both businesses, one new and one over 90 years young, flourishing together.”

Jerome Saint-Marc, CEO of Wilko added: “Autonomous vehicles are the future of automated logistics, and StreetDrone is undoubtedly one of the key players that will lead the way in making this technology viable. It has gone from strength to strength over the last four years and is one of the companies that’s putting the UK on the map in developing this type of game-changing technology. One of the key reasons why we’re backing the team at StreetDrone is that this sort of transformative technology can have a huge and positive impact for hard-working families, and it’s this ethos that runs through all of our work at Wilko. Ultimately, it has the potential to reduce costs for customers when deployed in the retail sector. We look forward to supporting them on this journey.”

Oxford-based StreetDrone develops autonomous technologies focussed on meeting the autonomous last-kilometre challenge. The company also supports a network of customers with autonomous R&D products through its StreetDrone Labs brand. StreetDrone Labs has a global spread of customers and reseller agreements from Asia and Australasia to Europe and the Middle East, offering a range of ready-to-go driverless vehicles, self-driving software stacks and services such as fleet teleoperation.