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U.S: Manna Drone Delivery in Texas: Four Months on

Back in Octo­ber, the Irish-based drone deliv­ery com­pa­ny Man­na, found­ed by ser­i­al entre­pre­neur, Bob­by Healy, stretched its wings and start­ed fly­ing above North Texas, USA, with an ini­tial tri­al of deliv­er­ing to the Pecan Square com­mu­ni­ty, where res­i­dents could order a range of food and bev­er­ages, includ­ing a selec­tion of Hal­loween choco­lates and can­dies, reports the irishexaminer.com.

In a world-first, Europe’s largest and most-advanced drone deliv­ery oper­a­tor, took trick or treat­ing to new heights, ini­tial­ly trans­port­ing can­dy to local fam­i­lies.

Please Watch Video

https://www.manna.aero/us/pecan-square

Fol­low­ing suc­cess­ful oper­a­tions in the Irish towns of Mon­ey­gall, Oran, Bal­brig­gan and Blan­chard­stown, Man­na then com­menced its first U.S tri­al over the Dallas/Ft.Worth area in col­lab­o­ra­tion with multi­na­tion­al real estate devel­op­ment com­pa­ny, Hill­wood.

Andrew Pat­ton, Head of U.S Man­na Deliv­ery, remarked at the time, “After four years of oper­a­tions and over 150,000 flights logged in Europe, we are excit­ed to be touch­ing down in the Unit­ed States to offer the res­i­dents a light­ning-quick and sus­tain­able home deliv­ery ser­vice.” 

The fol­low­ing Texas tri­al came in tan­dem with a strate­gic invest­ment in Man­na from Coca-Cola HBC, the bot­tling part­ner of the glob­al drinks firm. The release explains, “The affil­i­ate col­lab­o­rates with dis­rup­tive start-ups that have syn­er­gies with its busi­ness ambi­tions in the areas of last mile, vend­ing, cof­fee tech­nol­o­gy and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.”

Bob­by Healy, CEO and Founder of Man­na, com­ment­ed, “Work­ing with Hill­wood who devel­op tech­nol­o­gy-for­ward, inno­v­a­tive lifestyle com­mu­ni­ties and Coca-Cola HBC who are com­mit­ted to more sus­tain­able and advanced deliv­ery solu­tions, is tes­ta­ment to the real­i­sa­tion that last mile deliv­ery can be done in a more effi­cient, safer and green­er way.”  

Man­na com­mis­sioned a study with Ireland’s Uni­ver­si­ty of Maynooth to com­pare the amount of car­bon emit­ted dur­ing drone deliv­ery to nor­mal forms of deliv­ery includ­ing cars, motor­bikes and elec­tric bikes. The study showed that Manna’s drone emit­ted between six and eight times less C02 than a small petrol car and that although e‑bikes may emit slight­ly less car­bon diox­ide, they take twice as long as drones to com­plete deliv­er­ies. 

Healy con­tin­ued, “The air­craft itself pro­duces no CO2 when it flies because it’s an elec­tric-pow­ered air­craft. The report showed that we’re less effi­cient than an elec­tric bicy­cle but eight times more effi­cient than a small petrol car.” 

Zoran Bog­danovic, CEO, Coca-Cola HBC, said, “Our invest­ment in Man­na encap­su­lates an ambi­tion to deliv­er our prod­ucts in new and more sus­tain­able ways. This part­ner­ship allows us to be at the fore­front of dis­rup­tive tech­nolo­gies across the world­wide con­sumer pack­aged goods mar­ket.”

For Man­na, this strate­gic part­ner­ship pro­vides insights and exper­tise from a mar­ket lead­ing bev­er­age com­pa­ny, and over time, the two organ­i­sa­tions plan to work to iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties for the drone com­pa­ny to scale across Coca-Cola HBC’s ter­ri­to­ries. 

Bob­by Healy

Healy explained, “The U.S is our num­ber one tar­get mar­ket and the con­sumer base there loves con­ve­nience. We want our drone to be like the orig­i­nal Volk­swa­gen Bee­tle. It just keeps work­ing and with low main­te­nance costs. The key is to fly into a world where you can do more than 100,000 flights between main­te­nance inter­vals. We’re build­ing smart, elec­tron­ic heli­copters, but we have the safe­ty over­heads of both air­lines and air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers.” 

The inter­na­tion­al busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has been enthu­si­as­tic for Healy and his company’s vision. In addi­tion to reg­u­la­to­ry access across bor­ders, Enter­prise Ire­land has been work­ing to assist Man­na through­out the fundrais­ing process. 

Healy stat­ed, “Most busi­ness­es are pre­dictable and believ­able. Ours is beyond cut­ting edge. We’re doing some­thing total­ly new, but we have over­come dis­be­lief and begun to suc­cess­ful­ly raise sig­nif­i­cant lev­els of cap­i­tal.”

He has decid­ed to focus on the food indus­try because the poten­tial deliv­ery vol­ume is extreme­ly high, allow­ing the new busi­ness to be cap­i­tal-effi­cient ear­ly on. Once the infra­struc­ture is in place, Man­na then plans to roll out oth­er ser­vices includ­ing for phar­ma­cies, hard­ware stores, butch­er shops and book­stores.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.manna.aero/

(News Source: www.irishexaminer.com/)

(Images: Man­na Drone Deliv­ery)

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