German delivery drone manufacturer and service provider Wingcopter last week raised $42 million from renowned financial and strategic investors as part of a Series A extension round.

The fresh funding triples the company’s total equity raise to more than $60 million to date.

Leading retailer REWE Group and German investors Salvia and XAI technologies have come onboard as new shareholders. They will now join Japanese conglomerate ITOCHU and previous backers Future Capital from Germany and Xplorer Capital based in Silicon Valley.

Wingcopter said the investment of REWE Group, one of Germany’s largest grocery retailers with 12,000 stores across Europe, is a ‘clear sign’ that the company is expanding beyond medical drone delivery services.

Wingcopter plans to use the capital injection to accelerate the firm’s R&D efforts on new product features and to hire 80 new employees across departments within the coming months.

The new capital raised came shortly after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had approved the Airworthiness Criteria for the company’s flagship aircraft Wingcopter 198.

Wingcopter said its product has been experiencing a continuously growing demand and has already sold most slots for the next 2 years. The company’s production facility in Germany is designed to manufacture thousands of Wingcopter drones per year and will soon start with partly automated work to speed up production.