AlShrouq Express readies drone delivery trials as Saudi tests the economics of automated delivery

Saudi last-mile operator AlShrouq Express is in the final development stages of a drone delivery service, with trials “planned in the coming months,” the company’s chief marketing officer, Malak Jarrar, tells EnterpriseAM. Conventional delivery is mostly variable cost (labor, fuel, vehicle operation and utilization), Jarrar says, while drones and autonomous vehicles shift more of it into fixed technology and hardware. That makes volume the deciding number, since the fixed cost has to be spread across as many deliveries as possible.

AlShrouq has the volume to test the math: The company’s network covers more than 55 cities and handles over 50k deliveries a day for upward of 4k clients. It is also advancing the autonomous-vehicle work it first piloted with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and National Defense University (NDU) several years ago. That pilot reached more than 60 deliveries per vehicle a day “in the right environment,” Jarrar says.

Regulation sets the pace: The General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) issued its first drone-delivery operating permit to Terra Drone Arabia during this year’s Hajj, limited to medicines and medical logistics. That followed a drone parcel trial for postal deliveries in September 2025, and a robot food-delivery pilot in Riyadh last year under the Transport General Authority’s sandbox. AlShrouq is “following the development of the regulatory frameworks closely” and designing its systems to deploy “subject to the required approvals,” Jarrar says.