A Dublin drone delivery firm promises to fly coffee, food and medical supplies direct to your door within just three minutes.
Manna Drone Delivery has announced a major expansion in Balbriggan – with 50 new jobs on the way for the north Dublin suburb.
It represents a 50% increase in the company’s workforce – with plans underway to expand into Europe next year.
On Breakfast Business this morning, Manna CEO Bobby Healy said they are using Balbriggan as a test case before scaling up the business in Europe and the US.
A Manna Aero drone operator loads up essential household and medical supplies for delivery. Image: REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo“We deliver everything,” he said. “We’re delivering delicious hot coffees and pastries. We’re delivering all of your grocery and supermarket needs.
“We have hot food in the evenings and we can even send you a defibrillator if you happen to need one.
“Flying broccoli, 60 mile an hour, 50 metres in the air – everything you need. We’ve already delivered to nearly 20% of the town of Balbriggan so many thousands of people have already used the service.”
He said there are between 30,000 and 35,000 people in Balbriggan and the company aims to reach every one of them before the year is out.
“Once we announce where we’re going, there is a lot of excitement comes from that and everyone downloads our app and everyone is kind of dying for their first drone delivery.
“Our plan is to launch Balbriggan fully until everyone has tried the service and until we have tried all the local vendors and we just get a feel for what it is going to look like at scale when we try to launch across Europe.
“We’ll run there for at least the full year and maximise and just try to understand what type of products people want, what do they want delivered regularly and how many aircraft do we need.
“We have four aircraft and each aircraft can do about 60 or 70 deliveries a day – so that’s kind of the way to look at it.”
He said the 50 new jobs include aircraft maintenance, aircraft operators, B2B agents and sales and marketing staff.
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