New Zealand’s pizza lovers will be the first to grab a slice delivered by airborne robots, as Domino’s shows off its new drone in Auckland.

The pizza giant demonstrated its robot delivery system on Thursday as part of its partnership with US-drone service Flirtey, under which deliveries will be made to homes via drone.

New Zealand was chosen as the launch market because its regulations allow easier trials of drones by businesses, Domino’s said.

“With the increased number of deliveries we make each year, we were faced with the challenge of ensuring our delivery times continue to decrease and that we strive to offer our customers new and progressive ways of ordering from us.

“We have invested heavily to provide our stores with different delivery fleet options such as electric scooters, e-bikes and even the Domino’s robotic unit – DRU that we launched earlier this year.

“We’ve always said that it doesn’t make sense to have a 2-tonne machine delivering a 2-kilogram order.”

Transport Minister Simon Bridges welcomed the announcement that New Zealand is the first country to trial the first air delivered pizza.

“Domino’s and Flirtey have chosen New Zealand for the trial because our forward-thinking aviation regulations encourage innovation, while protecting safety,” said Bridges.

“The announcement of this trial confirms that New Zealand’s framework for UAVs is world-class. In addition, the Government has reviewed the laws for driverless vehicles and Small Passenger Service operators, to ensure New Zealand stays at the forefront of transport innovation.”

Bridges also said the Government is also continuing to work with Domino’s on the possibility of testing a driverless pizza delivery unit on land.