Something is happening in neighborhoods of northwest Dublin that’s exciting residents – and it isn’t Ireland’s dominating performances in the ongoing Six Nations’ rugby tournament (or not only, anyway). Instead, people have been uploading videos of what could be the start of a long awaited move by Irish startup Manna Drone Delivery to roll out and scale regular services in the Irish capital.
A series of phone videos have been posted on social media over the past week by customers in northwest Dublin as they receive orders of various goods lowered to their yards from Manna delivery drones. Most footage captures what sound like fairly excited clients watching the final phase of the to-your-doorstep UAV transport, with one gentleman celebrating the aerial service with a delighted shout, “There’s my coffee!”
Other posters added post-production touches by putting drone arrivals to music, or captured night shots of a Manna delivery drone flashing what were (almost) Ireland’s colors on the craft’s lights.
What’s behind the all the celestial excitement? With the company currently mum, it’s hard to say exactly. But local media coverage suggests the activity may correspond to Manna gearing up for the major scaling push the company has been planning for some time now.
Reports indicate the UAV flights generating the video posts were located above and around Dublin’s northwest Blanchardstown area, where Manna trialed operation about six months ago. Shortly after, US competitor Wing announced it planned on launching medical drone deliveries in an unnamed district of Dublin.
Introducing full service in the city would boost Manna’s coverage by over 130,000 homes virtually overnight, and set the stage for potential scaling of what has been its popular activity in Eire.
Manna has over 100,000 drone deliveries already to its record in Ireland, mostly in what has been its main market-cum-operational-laboratory of Balbriggan. But the company has been planning a big move beyond that town of 35,000 residents north of Dublin for some time, notably services in the capital itself. All the current buzzing above Blanchardstown just now might be a precursor to that kind of action.
That feasibility is all the more plausible following Manna’s unexpected detour to the US last spring, when it struck a partnership and secured financing to initiate drone delivery trials in Texas’ booming Dallas-Fort Worth area. While cracking the American market was a stated objective of startup CEO Bobby Healy, the move came earlier than initially planned, and appeared to slow the business development momentum the firm had attained in Ireland.
Now, Manna’s domestic market could be back at center stage – if the sightings of its delivery drones popping up in videos by Blanchardstown residents is any indication. For the moment, the startup hasn’t made any announcements to that effect, and its webpage still lists its services as “coming soon” to the area.
The next several weeks or months will reveal whether the sudden burst of Manna activity around Blanchardstown is indeed the beginning of its previously planned scaling offensive across Dublin, then Ireland, and Europe beyond. If so, customers in the area should get their phones ready for footage of what could be hundreds of daily UAVs lowering orders from on high.
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