Toledo Startup Drops Life-Saving Humanitarian Aid from the Sky
When humanitarian aid workers are trying to get supplies to a location that is unstable, unsafe or otherwise unreachable, they don’t have many options. Typically, they end up trying to drop a large pallet with a traditional parachute, hoping it will land safely and won’t endanger anyone on the ground or damage its contents. But a Toledo startup has modernized the process with the potential to save lives. The idea was born in 2010, when Jeff Potter and his team watched the challenges of the humanitarian response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti. They thought they could create something better, and founded SkyLIFE Global.
“There was not a sufficient way to immediately deliver supplies,” he said. “Governments were using really old technology, which didn’t work too well. Our engineering firm in Toledo typically works in industrial innovation and plastic processing systems design, creating everything from diaper lines to nano-fiber lines that we’ve developed for Fortune 500 companies. So we went to work on a better way to provide aid, and we came up with the SkyLIFE way and a couple of different technologies.”
Read the rest of what TechOhio has to say here
