A Scottish drone port project seeks a private operator for BVLOS test flights, aligning decarbonisation aims with local community involvement.
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Angus Council has opened early market engagement on a concessionaire contract to develop the Mercury Drone Port in Montrose, a proposed base for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone trials. The project brings together unmanned aviation, decarbonisation goals and community involvement, and may help define how local authorities shape infrastructure around advanced drone operations.
Published on 9th January 2026, a pre-procurement notice for the Mercury Drone Port opportunity confirms that Angus Council is seeking market engagement on a concessionaire contract to develop a new drone facility in Montrose. The site is intended to host BVLOS drone trials while supporting wider policy goals on cutting emissions and involving local residents and organisations.
The notice sits at an early stage. As a pre-procurement exercise, it is designed to test market interest and gather feedback before a full tender is drafted. A concessionaire contract typically brings in a private partner to take on defined responsibilities and risks in developing and running a facility, with the commercial structure set out in the eventual agreement.
Concessions are already part of the toolkit for public bodies in Angus. In September 2025, local culture and leisure provider ANGUSalive published a pre-procurement for the operation of café concessions at its leisure venues, with a focus on healthy and affordable food, community wellbeing and sustainability. Mercury Drone Port extends that model into a very different field: unmanned aviation.
BVLOS operations allow drones to fly beyond the unaided sight of a human operator, enabling longer-range missions and more complex routes than line-of-sight flights. For public bodies, that capability is relevant to sectors such as infrastructure inspection, logistics, emergency response and environmental monitoring, as well as to potential defence and security applications.
Other UK buyers are already investing in systems that make routine use of drones more practical. In July 2025, the Police and Crime Commissioners for Sussex and Surrey issued a prior information notice for Drone Downlink Functionality, seeking a supplier for a system that can stream live drone images to authorised users and control rooms, with secure storage and robust auditing. That work focuses on moving data from the air to decision-makers in real time, complementing infrastructure projects like Mercury Drone Port but addressing a different layer of the ecosystem.
Fleet expansion is another theme. In September 2025, the Chief Constable for Devon and Cornwall Police began market engagement for a Regional Drone Supply Analysis, exploring the market for drones with a range of capabilities to enhance its fleet. In the same month, the Forest Research Institute of Baden-Württemberg published a notice on Drone Equipment Procurement, covering drones, camera systems and accessories in three lots. While those procurements concentrate on platforms and sensors, Mercury Drone Port is about the dedicated space where more advanced concepts of operation can be trialled.
The Angus proposal sits alongside a wider push in Europe to build specialised infrastructure for unmanned vehicles. In December 2025, Provinciale Ontwikkelingsmaatschappij West-Vlaanderen launched a contract for the Purchase of Lift System for Drones in Ostend, aimed at equipping the Drone Dock and The Reef training centre with a mobile system for floating and diving drones. Also in December 2025, Centre hospitalier de Valenciennes published a contract notice for vertiport infrastructure for drones to transport medical samples, integrating unmanned aircraft into hospital logistics.
In Scotland, comparable thinking extends across air, space and sea. In November 2025, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar issued a pre-procurement notice for Spaceport 1 operations in Uist, seeking management services for a launch facility. A month later, the Scottish Association for Marine Science, via APUC Limited, sought an Autonomous Underwater Glider with a buoyancy-driven engine and defined warranty. Together, these projects suggest that Scotland’s ports, islands and research centres are becoming testbeds for new forms of unmanned and autonomous operation.
Mercury Drone Port would add an aerial strand to that pattern. Rather than treating drones as add-ons to existing airfields, it points towards purpose-designed environments for BVLOS trials. In procurement terms, that means public bodies are starting to define what a “drone port” is, how it should function, and which responsibilities sit with the authority versus a private concessionaire.
Angus Council presents decarbonisation and community involvement as central aims for Mercury Drone Port, not secondary benefits. That framing aligns the project with a series of Scottish procurements that link infrastructure and technology investment to climate and social outcomes. In November 2025, East Dunbartonshire Council tendered a Nature-Based Investment Study to assess natural capital, identify nature-based solutions and model carbon sequestration. In December 2025, Voluntary Action Barra and Vatersay sought suppliers for a renewable energy installation for Vatersay Hall, combining wind, solar, battery storage and more efficient heating and cooling. And in July 2025, Crown Estate Scotland went to market for a Grid Constraints Consultancy to analyse how energy networks affect offshore wind production.
By placing Mercury Drone Port within this net zero agenda, the council is signalling that the facility is not simply a technical test range. It is framed as part of a broader shift towards lower-carbon activity and as something that should deliver tangible benefits for people living and working nearby. The detail of how decarbonisation and community objectives are written into the eventual concession will be critical to how the project is received.
Similar balancing acts are visible in surface transport. In October 2025, Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Authority issued a pre-procurement for a Trossachs Explorer Shuttle Bus, looking to extend a service that depends on funding. In November 2025, Portsmouth City Council sought feedback on a Shuttle Bus Service for Lakeside, explicitly targeting reduced congestion and carbon emissions. Mercury Drone Port sits at the intersection of these strands – mobility, emissions and local economic development – but applies them to unmanned flight rather than road transport.
Because the current notice is for market engagement rather than a full tender, potential concessionaires still have scope to influence how the opportunity is framed. Points such as the scope and duration of the concession, access arrangements for different types of user, and the balance between commercial activity, research, public services and community benefit remain to be defined. The way these issues are resolved will shape both the attractiveness of the project to operators and its impact on the surrounding area.
Across the UK and mainland Europe, recent notices – from police drone fleets and data links to vertiports, drone docks and autonomous marine vehicles – indicate a steady normalisation of unmanned systems in public services. The Mercury Drone Port opportunity shows that local councils are beginning to position themselves not just as drone users, but as hosts of the infrastructure that makes more advanced operations possible. How the concession is structured and awarded will offer an early indication of what that role looks like in practice.
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