Good news for Cork food lovers, local restaurants and job seekers alike as drone delivery company Manna expands into the city, bringing a new kind of ultra-fast delivery service that could see food, groceries and everyday essentials arriving at people’s homes in minutes. The company already operates the world’s largest drone delivery network in Dublin and Cork is now the first location outside the capital that it has chosen for its next phase of expansion.
For founder and CEO Bobby Healy, the move is part of a bigger plan to transform how goods move around large urban areas. Over the past three years he has been building Manna, a company designed to create a global drone delivery network for businesses, with the aim of making three-minute, low-cost deliveries as normal and reliable as turning on a tap.
Bobby Healy is no stranger to building global technology companies. Earlier in his career he founded Eland Technologies, an airline technology company that he later sold to SITA in 2003. He then spent 14 years building CarTrawler into a major global business that helps airlines offer services like car hire and ground transport to their passengers.
But the idea for Manna began in a much simpler way, with a bag of chips. “I got an off-the-shelf drone, modified it and made it carry a bag of chips to my garden just to prove that it would work,” he says. “That bag of chips landed in my garden in the winter of 2018.”
At the time, Healy had been thinking about how inefficient traditional food delivery could be. “I used to see a guy sitting in a car with the engine running outside a chipper near where I live,” he explains. “He’d be there for four or five hours every night waiting for orders to come in. He might only do two or three deliveries an hour.”
The driver was essentially waiting around all evening for work. “He’s sitting there with the engine running to keep warm and he’s only making enough money for a few pints,” Healy says. “And the chipper struggled to get drivers, they could probably be twice the size if they could have delivered more.”
That moment planted the seed of an idea – what if drones could replace road-based deliveries altogether? “I looked at drones as a workhorse that could move goods around for businesses in a really efficient way,” he says. “Something that could dramatically change suburban living by giving people access to things quickly that you would normally only get in a big city centre.”
Like many technology ideas, the concept started small before gradually growing. The first real-world operations happened during the Covid-19 pandemic. During the first lockdown, elderly residents in many communities could not leave their homes. “We started flying during the first lockdown in Moneygall,” Healy says. “We were delivering prescription medicines for the HSE when elderly people were required to cocoon.”
The service quickly expanded. “It started with prescription medicine and it has developed to everything from Supermacs to lottery tickets and bread and milk and everything in between,” he says. “And it is working great.”
Moneygall, a village of about 700 people, suddenly became the centre of global attention as the unusual delivery service made international headlines. “We were flying from Barack Obama Plaza and we were the talk of the town.. We grew from there to Oranmore in Galway, which has a population of about 10,000 people,” he says. “Then we went to Balbriggan in north Dublin and now Dublin 15, which is currently the world’s biggest drone delivery operation.”
The company has made 60,0000 deliveries in Dublin and 250,000 overall. “We deliver to about 62 per cent of households in Dublin 15,” Bobby says. “We’ve been delivering to that number of people for over two years now.”
Demand has continued to grow steadily. “It’s going great. Right now there’s a milk delivery in the air. Someone has ordered two litres of milk and it’s on the way.”
Speed is one of the things that surprises customers the most. “Two coffees were delivered in Dublin from pressing the app to it arriving on the doorstep in eleven minutes. And that milk we just delivered took eight minutes from the time it was ordered.”
Behind the scenes, the company has become many things at once. “As well as being a tech company we are an airline because we operate aircraft, and we’re a logistics company because we’re moving goods,” he says. “Everyone thinks we’re a food delivery company but food delivery is just one of the things that we do.”
The drones can carry a wide range of goods including groceries, hardware items, books and over-the-counter medicines. “We deliver medicine, hardware, books and a lot more than food,” he explains.
Food delivery simply provided the easiest way to prove the technology worked before expanding into more regulated sectors. “Medical deliveries are heavily regulated and it takes years to get going,” he says. “So we applied the technology to things that already exist like food delivery first.”
Longer term, however, healthcare logistics is a major area of interest. “In hospitals they often take blood samples and send them in a taxi to a lab. “But urgency is critical in those situations and it could be the difference between life and death.”
Drones could dramatically reduce those delivery times. “We can get across Dublin city in about eleven minutes and Cork city in about six minutes,” he says.
The company is also exploring the possibility of delivering defibrillators to people experiencing cardiac arrest.
For now, the immediate focus is on expanding the delivery network across Ireland. “Cork is the first big city outside of Dublin that we have taken on,” Bobby says.
The expansion will also bring new employment opportunities to Leeside. “In every area that we move into we hire about 50 people. “So for operations alone we will have up to 50 people in Cork.”
There is also the potential for more investment in Cork. “As we grow our manufacturing we will probably spread some of the manufacturing load to Cork as well,” he says.
Currently about 175 people work on the aircraft software and hardware side of the business in Ireland, and all of the company’s European aircraft are manufactured here.
Looking at Cork’s long history as a technology hub, Bobby believes the city could play a bigger role as the company grows. “I look at the Qualcomm model down there and I think we could be the next Qualcomm for Cork. “.
Using the service itself is designed to be simple. Customers download the Manna app and enter their Eircode to see whether they are within the delivery area.
“If they are, they are shown a list of shops and restaurants available for delivery. Customers then choose a delivery location such as a garden or open space. We show them a picture of their garden or delivery area and ask if that’s okay. The cost is €1.99 per delivery for the consumer,” he explains.
Once the order is ready the drone takes off and customers can track the flight in real time.
“You get a notification when the aircraft takes off and you can watch it as it flies towards you,” he says.
When the drone arrives it hovers above the delivery point before lowering the order on a cord. “The aircraft arrives about eighty metres above the ground and descends to about fourteen metres. Then the doors underneath open and the bag drops out and lands on the ground about four and a half seconds later.”
The aircraft themselves are electric and produce no emissions during flight.
“One of our drones will do about 75,000 flights in its lifetime,” Bobby says. “Across those flights it will take about 6,000 miles off the road.”
That also means fewer delivery drivers on busy residential streets. “A delivery driver is six times more likely to be involved in a collision than a normal driver,” he says. “I have four kids and I’m very aware of delivery drivers going around housing estates trying to make fast deliveries in areas they don’t know.”
Drone delivery removes that pressure while also reducing congestion and it works without the company needing to know much about the customer at all.
“They don’t record,” he says. “There is no way for us to take pictures or record people. It’s fully GDPR compliant. We don’t even know the names of the people we are flying to. “It’s just GPS coordinates.”
Public reaction to the technology has been positive.
“In the last three months we might have had ten complaints out of about 150,000 people,” he says. The most common reaction is simply excitement.
“Sometimes we arrive and there are kids in the garden or a paddling pool in the delivery spot,” he says. “If there is somebody underneath the aircraft we won’t deliver.”
In those situations the drone simply returns to base and the company contacts the customer to clear the delivery area before trying again.
For most users, however, the process quickly becomes routine. “After one or two deliveries people get it and it’s very straightforward. ”.
Looking ahead, Healy believes drone delivery could soon become a normal part of everyday life. “We are just starting to grow operationally now,” he says. “The product is in a great place and the manufacturing is really strong.”
The company is already operating in Ireland, Finland and the United States, with plans to expand further into the Middle East. In the global race to develop drone delivery networks, Manna is already competing with some of the biggest names in technology. “Our main competitors would be Google and Amazon. In terms of the complexity and size of the operation in Dublin, we are by far the biggest in the world, and in terms of what our aircraft can carry we’re ahead in a number of areas.”
“In five years we should be the leader in the United States, which is the biggest market,” he says. “We are already the leader in Europe.”
For Cork customers, the future of delivery may be closer than we think with dinner quite literally dropping out of the sky.
With a name like Healy it’s little wonder there’s a Cork connection. Bobby’s aunt Pat Healy is a proud Corkonian. Add in Manna’s Director of Corporate Affairs Terri O’Keefe, another Rebel living locally, and Cork fingerprints are already on the story. As the service grows around the world, we’ll happily take our share of the credit.
Download the Manna app from the App Store or Google Play and enter your Eircode to see if drone delivery is available in your area.
See www.manna.aero
