Israeli solar companies Solar Drone and Blade Ranger merge
Israeli solar companies Solar Drone and Blade Ranger merge
Shmulik Yannay, the brother of the chairman of Nofar Energy, Ofer Yannay, is one of the owners of Solar Drone, which developed a drone for cleaning solar panels. The company will be merged with Blade Ranger, which was active in the same field but failed in marketing its robot
Shmulik Yannay, the brother of the founder and chairman of Nofar Energy Ofer Yannay, is approaching the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Calcalist learned that Yannay is one of the owners of Solar Drone, which he founded with the former CEO of Delek Real Estate Eran Meital, and the entrepreneur Moshe Zuk.
Calcalist also learned that Solar Drone, which developed a cleaning drone for solar panels, is merging with Blade Ranger, which operates in the same field and was one of the stock market hits in the first half of 2021.
Blade Ranger began trading in Tel Aviv in December 2020, with a value of NIS 93 million ($24 million USD). Within two months, its value jumped to a record of almost NIS 240 million ($62.2 million), but recently it fell to a value of only NIS 8 million ($2 million). For the purpose of the merger with Solar Drone, Blade Ranger will try to raise NIS 10 million ($2.5 million) from its shareholders through a rights issue.
In recent weeks, Solar Drone has begun selling the drone it developed to funded pilots in floating reservoirs in Israel, and in the coming months, it will enter serial production and distribution in a model of continuous flow to end customers - mainly abroad. Solar Drone's drone has the ability to reach less accessible areas on land and at sea, to floating panels, and on sloped roofs - regardless of panel size.
Blade Ranger, under the management of Oded Fruchtman, develops solutions to maximize energy production from solar fields. The robot it developed - which also has access to less accessible places - operates without the use of water and saves treatment costs. The company has delivered dozens of these robots, mainly to industrial buildings.
For Blade Ranger, the merger with Solar Drone is an admission of failure and an attempt to correct the situation with another drone. Its cumulative loss in two years amounted to NIS 25 million ($6.5 million) - an amount that empties its coffers, which had about NIS 2 million left ($500,000) as of the end of June. About a month ago, the company announced that it was unable to find funding sources and therefore it is forced to reduce activity. Blade Ranger hopes that the merger will allow the company to advance in the renewable energy market. Their failure is not the only one in the field. The Ecoppia and Airtouch models, which were issued at a value of NIS 1.3 billion ($337 million) and NIS 410 million ($106 million) respectively, lost over 95% of their value.
