Drone delivery firm Manna says by the end of the year they will have between 10 and 15 bases opened along the M50 corridor in Dublin.
The company, which has been operating out of Blanchardstown, just metres away from burrito bar Boojum, has just opened a second Dublin base close to Junction 6 on the M50 as well as recently setting up a freshly minted operation in Texas.
But it is now gearing up for a major expansion that will for the first time see vast swathes of the capital’s suburbs able to access the service.
“By the end of the year, we will have 10 or 15 new bases opened and also in one other European market which I cannot name yet,” Manna’s CEO and founder Bobby Healy.
“Those locations will be doing somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 deliveries a day. They will primarily be around the M50 route.
“Most suburban dwellers in Dublin should expect to see the service in the next three to six months.”
The major selling point of the service is not only is it environmentally friendly- eight times less emissions than a car- but it is speed. The drone can reach 60kmh at a height of 50 to 65metres
Once an order is received through the app the food is delivered by the business to the nearby base where it is weighed and loaded.
The drones are fully autonomous once they are given an Eircode and the customer drops a pin to show where they want the delivery.
A human ‘pilot’ monitors as many as 20 deliveries from the base at the same time.
Intriguingly, he revealed Manna has signed up with “two of the largest players in the world already”.
One of the companies does “billions of deliveries a year.”
He said Manna want to become the Ryanair of the drone delivery sector who instead of ferrying passengers want to move “every hamburger or coffee”.
“We don’t care if you come through Just Eat or Manna we just want everyone to use Manna. We can deliver within three minutes which far exceeds road based deliveries.”
And the company say they are waiting on “one signature from a regulator” to start doing business at a new location in Europe.
The bespoke drone tested over the peatlands of Offaly can fly in rain, snow and even energy sapping 36kmh winds which says Healy covers 97per cent of Irish weather.
The next two years will decide whether the company, which already has 120 employees and has raised €60m in funding, is going to reach critical mass.
Healy freely admits “it takes forever to build something that is reliable, safe and easy to scale” but after five years of hard grind they are now “on the cusp of being ready”.
While Manna has outperformed Amazon in Ireland who have been trialling their own drone delivery there are others such as Google’s Wings who are serious rivals.
Currently, Manna is doing about 400 to 500 deliveries a day over the week with Sunday their busiest day for takeaways. Coffee is their number one delivery item.
“If we fail it is because someone else who does it has more money or in effect a bigger gun.
“It’s not romantic but that’s the reality, it is not always the best company or best product that succeeds it is the company with the most capital.”
“My job is to raise enough capital to allow us to grow at the rate we are capable of growing at.
“Success is being the largest in the world and potentially IPO the business but the point at which we will be safe is likely to be in less than two years when we reach escape velocity and nothing can hold us back.”
Already, one in five homes in D15 close to their start-up base have used their service but Healy expects that to increase to one in three by the end of the year- dwarfing their ground-level rivals like Just Eat.
The fact their army of 50 drones are zipping across the skyline making eight deliveries an hour for 12 hours a day six days a week means they are also constantly attracting new business.
“You are going to see us all the time, 70 per cent of our new customers say they saw us in the sky.”
Even after five years Healy says he gets a thrill when he sees one of his drones “in the wild”.
“I was at the NAC with my kids at the weekend and afterwards we were going to Nanado’s when we saw one of the drones on the way to a delivery. It gives me a huge sense of pride to see that.
“I have a 20-year-old daughter and even she thinks it is cool so that is something.”
And the possibilities for uses for the drones are endless. While food deliveries are limited to 2.5kg at a time the drones can in an emergency carry a defibrillator.
“We are the most interesting business out there after Space X. We are already linked in with the emergency services to deliver a defibrillator if needed which thankfully hasn’t happened yet.”
Pic Tom Honan
Healy gave the example of someone becoming ill in the woods near Three Rock which is just under 30km from Blanchardstown.
He’s adamant using one of their drones “would be the fastest way of getting it there.”
“We could just use up all the battery for a one way trip and figure out how to get the drone back later,” he explained.
“Hospitals also use a lot of taxis to deliver bloods and files we could do a much better job getting them where they need to go in the future.”
