Manna Air Delivery Announces Strategic Pause of Delivery Operations in Dublin and Cork

Man­na Air Deliv­ery is putting a strate­gic pause on its drone deliv­ery ser­vice in Ire­land, say­ing the absence of a clear nation­al pol­i­cy frame­work for com­mer­cial drone deliv­ery means there is cur­rent­ly no defined path­way for the sec­tor to scale in the coun­try.

In a state­ment released at the end of last week, Man­na stressed this deci­sion rep­re­sents a strate­gic pause rather, than a per­ma­nent with­draw­al of deliv­ery oper­a­tions from Ire­land.

The com­pa­ny said it remains con­fi­dent drone deliv­ery can play an impor­tant role in strength­en­ing com­mu­ni­ties by help­ing local busi­ness­es thrive, improv­ing access to essen­tial goods and ser­vices and reduc­ing con­ges­tion and emis­sions. This ensures peo­ple of all ages and abil­i­ties can access what they need, when they need it.

Should an appro­pri­ate nation­al pol­i­cy frame­work be estab­lished, Man­na added it would wel­come the oppor­tu­ni­ty to resume deliv­ery oper­a­tions in Ire­land and remains ready to work with the Irish Gov­ern­ment, the Irish Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty and oth­er local bod­ies to help shape the Nation­al Drone Frame­work.

Bob­by Healy Founder and CEO of Man­na, said: “This is a dif­fi­cult deci­sion because Ire­land is where Man­na was found­ed, built and first proven. We are incred­i­bly grate­ful to the com­mu­ni­ties, busi­ness­es, cus­tomers and employ­ees who helped show that drone deliv­ery can work at scale.

“How­ev­er, in the absence of a clear nation­al path­way to scale com­mer­cial drone deliv­ery, we have to focus our invest­ment in mar­kets where that path­way is now clear.”

Found­ed in Ire­land, Man­na has spent the past sev­en years pio­neer­ing com­mer­cial drone deliv­ery, suc­cess­ful­ly launch­ing and oper­at­ing ser­vices in Mon­ey­gall, Oran­more, Bal­brig­gan, Blan­chard­stown and Cork. It has also expand­ed inter­na­tion­al­ly to Fin­land’s cap­i­tal city Helsin­ki and Texas, one of the USA’s largest states.

Over that peri­od, the com­pa­ny com­plet­ed more than 300,000 deliv­er­ies and part­nered with over 120 busi­ness­es pro­vid­ing com­mu­ni­ties with rapid access to gro­ceries, meals, phar­ma­cy prod­ucts, house­hold essen­tials and oth­er every­day goods.

In Manna’s most mature mar­ket, Blan­chard­stown, where the com­pa­ny has oper­at­ed since Feb­ru­ary 2024, almost 90,000 deliv­er­ies have been com­plet­ed. Man­na believes this suc­cess demon­strates both strong com­mu­ni­ty demand and the oppor­tu­ni­ty for Ire­land to address the pol­i­cy, plan­ning and infra­struc­ture gaps that can slow the deploy­ment of new tech­nolo­gies, even where con­sumer adop­tion and com­mer­cial demand are already well estab­lished.

In the absence of such a frame­work, deci­sions are assessed local­ly, cre­at­ing uncer­tain­ty around the plan­ning and infra­struc­ture require­ments need­ed to sup­port com­mer­cial drone deliv­ery at scale. At the same time, the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom, Chi­na and the UAE are demon­strat­ing rapid reg­u­la­to­ry progress and strong com­mer­cial momen­tum.

As a result, Man­na has decid­ed to con­cen­trate its invest­ment, tal­ent and oper­a­tional resources in mar­kets where large-scale drone deliv­ery is now a real­i­ty. Man­na has already received oper­a­tional autho­ri­sa­tion in both the USA and UK, and antic­i­pates full autho­ri­sa­tion to oper­ate in the UAE this year.

The deci­sion also means that planned expan­sion and future employ­ment growth at local oper­a­tional deliv­ery hubs in Ire­land will not pro­ceed at this time. This deci­sion does not affect Man­na’s con­tin­ued invest­ment in Ire­land, which will remain the com­pa­ny’s pri­ma­ry base for research and devel­op­ment, engi­neer­ing, robot­ics, reg­u­la­to­ry affairs, cus­tomer oper­a­tions and cor­po­rate func­tions.

Cus­tomers in affect­ed areas will be noti­fied direct­ly through the Man­na app and by email. Man­na will work with local busi­ness part­ners to com­plete the ces­sa­tion of Irish deliv­ery oper­a­tions in an order­ly man­ner.

Part­ner­ing with both glob­al giants and local busi­ness­es, Man­na deliv­ers a wide vari­ety of goods includ­ing books, gro­ceries, over the counter phar­ma­cy, meals and essen­tials in just min­utes, empow­er­ing busi­ness­es and sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduc­ing car­bon emis­sions.

Found­ed in 2019, Man­na has raised over $110 mil­lion in fund­ing to date.