'We had people come just to see it': Amazon delivers its first UK parcels by drone

An important development from the financial markets: 'We had people come just to see it': Amazon delivers its first UK parcels by drone14 minutes ago Share Save Add as preferred on GoogleEmma SimpsonBusiness correspondent 'We had people come just to see it': Amazon delivers its first UK parcels by droneAmazon has become the first retailer in the UK to start a drone delivery service with a limited launch in Darlington, County Durham. Packages weighing less than 5lb (2. 2kg) and containing everyday items such as beauty products, batteries and cables are now being delivered within a 7.

5 mile (12km) radius of Amazon's fulfilment centre. The tech giant is convinced there is demand for ultra-fast deliveries and hopes to slowly expand the service. Rob Shield let Amazon use an Airbnb on his farm for its first test runs.

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"Initially it was a novelty, so we were ordering everything under the sun," he says. "Pens, paper, chocolates - anything to make it keep coming. "Rob Shield ordered rubber gloves to be delivered by droneHis orders arrived in parcels the size of shoeboxes, which were dropped from a height of 12ft (3.

6m) on to the front garden. "We'd have people come just to see it," he says. "Since then, you obviously start realising 'I actually need something today' like tape measures and stuff like that you're always losing - we just order it and it comes.

"Rob Shield used Amazon's drone delivery service to order everything from chocolate to a tape measureIt's taken Amazon more than a decade to get this far but the company believes it will be worth it, and says customers are ready. "The certainty is people have never told us they want their stuff slower," says David Carbon, vice president of Amazon Prime Air. "If you've got kids and you want fever medication, you want it.

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You don't want to drive to the store," he says. In the UK, Amazon's drones currently deliver within two hours, but Carbon says the current average delivery time in the US is 36 minutes. Amazon will carry out a maximum ten flights an hour, or up to a hundred deliveries a day on weekdays.

The unmanned aircraft can drop off 100 parcels a day within a 7. 5 mile (12km) radius of Amazon's hub. Darlington is an interesting case study but shows drone deliveries are not easy, says Dr Anna Jackman, an associate professor of geography at the University of Reading.

"A lot of our demand for delivery services are in urban centres. They are very densely populated, very congested. And the reality is don't work well in high-rise buildings.

Financial markets are tracking the development closely as investors assess the likely impact.