Spiegel Business: The delivery of the morning newspaper is a problem for many publishers: they can hardly find any delivery people. Some publishers are now experimenting with a high-tech alternative: drone messengers.

There is space for 16 newspapers in a cube-shaped magazine under the drone. Software controls the aircraft so that it ejects the intended specimen at a specified point. In the project, three households on the northern outskirts of Jülich would be supplied with the »Jülicher Zeitung«.

According to Heinen, the aviation authority has approved the test operation under new EU law. Accordingly, a computer-controlled drone weighing up to 25 kilograms may drop objects over inhabited areas.

Newspaper delivery by drone is interesting for rural areas with isolated buildings, where delivery is very expensive due to the distance or where there are no newspaper messengers. In Germany, the circulation of printed newspapers has been declining for years. At the same time, publishers are complaining about increased delivery costs, also because of the minimum wage.