It is 8am on Thursday morning, and Bobby Healy has already done his first interview. It was Newstalk, the latest of nearly 50 media interviews the founder of Manna Air Delivery has done in the last few months since local opposition arose to his drone business in Dublin 15 and in Dundrum. The row centres on concerns expressed by a few hundred people about the noise of drones and concerns about privacy.

Then, Fingal County Council served an enforcement notice to Manna, claiming one of its launch sites at Junction 6 at the M50/N3 motorway intersection is operating without planning permission. Healy plans to contest this notice, but his frustration is palpable when talking about it. He understands people’s concerns, but believes they are overplayed, and that Manna can address them.

Healy believes Manna has created a disruptive technology, and that he’s leading a company that can take on Amazon, Google, and other giant companies that are all investing in flying robots to deliver anything from food to medicines. But instead of talking about that, he is on the radio justifying using two car parking spaces as a base for drones to take off and deliver food and coffee from.

Noise, privacy and taking on the tech giants

So far, Manna Air Delivery has raised $65 million (€55.5 million) from investors, and it employs 160 people. Healy is convinced Manna will employ hundreds more in time, as well as supporting restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores and so on, by delivering their goods directly to their customers. He is currently raising more capital to invest in taking the business more international after proving its business model by completing nearly 200,000 flights across Ireland, Finland and the United States.

It works both independently and with huge food delivery businesses Wolt (Doordash’s international brand), Just East, and Deliveroo. Healy believes that Manna is right up there with the world’s biggest companies in trying to solve drone delivery. 

Its main competitors are Wing, an Alphabet-funded company that is in Australia, Finland and the United States; Amazon, which has invested $6 billion in its drones; and Zipline, a specialist in moving medical supplies in countries in Africa, but now moving into food in the United States. 

“We are building something that will allow our customers to compete with Amazon,” Healy said. “We can see that customers and businesses love what we do. It is going to be an industry that happens. But do we want to be a leader in this, or do we want to sit back and let Amazon and Google take that prize?” Healy said Manna wanted to stay based in Ireland, but felt under siege.

He said clarifying what the rules are needed to be a priority for the Government. “This needs to be solved unambiguously and quickly,” he said. I ask him about the recent planning enforcement notice in Junction 6. “The planning enforcement notice says that there is a change of use of the car parking space to taking off drones,” Healy said. “But there is nothing that covers it directly. Our argument is that there are already deliveries coming in and out of that place.” 

“There is nothing in the planning laws that says food delivery is cars and motorbikes only,” he said.

“Drones are electric so there are no emissions, and they go up in the air rather than use the road,” he said. “There is a vacuum (around the rules), I appreciate that.

“We embrace regulation as it provides clarity and a local voice. But at this stage, to go so early and try to shut all this down doesn’t make sense for the country. It just doesn’t. I disagree with the local councillors’ approach to it, but I don’t disagree with the need for regulation.”

What about privacy? Healy says these concerns are unfounded, as Manna’s drones only turn their cameras on briefly as they descend for safety reasons to ensure they are not landing on anyone. Footage is not stored, Manna has no interest in peeking in at people, and the business is fully GDPR compliant, he said. 

Noise-wise, he said, Manna’s drones are quieter than vans when in flight, most of which takes place at 250 feet. A study by acoustic experts from Trinity College Dublin found, he said, that Manna’s drones in flight were “typically imperceptible within homes”. 

The sound increases, he admits, when the drone descends, but this was only for 20 seconds, and again not overly loud. 

“Our proprietary propellers are two-and-a-half times quieter than standard designs,” Healy said. “We are operating in Dublin 15 near the M50 and the Navan roads, two of the busiest roads in the country,” Healy said. “They are loud, noisy, and CO₂-producing. I am a bit bemused by some of the takes on what we are doing.

“We have been flying drones in Ireland for five years,” he said. “In Balbriggan, which is our biggest operation before we started in Blanchardstown, we’ve been serving 35,000 people and we’ve only had 16 complaints. They were made when we started, and then they went away as people got what we’re doing.”

Healy said that Manna’s recent wave of complaints was being encouraged by local councillors.

But has Manna done enough to address complaints? “We take it very seriously. I personally responded to nearly every complaint,” Healy said.

Manna, he said, visited 15 schools, 20 sports clubs, and did four leaflet drops totalling 20,000. It made a presentation to local politicians to tell people about their service in Dublin 15. “I spoke to all the local media,” Healy said. “What we didn’t do is engage directly with all individual councillors and that is the source of the problem, I think.” 

Healy said Manna was committed to engaging with them and wanted to do more. The Department of Transport, he said, is due to publish a framework document on unmanned aircraft systems this year, which will provide more guidance for everyone. “This isn’t a mistake or a lack of hard work by anyone,” Healy said. “There is regulation around aviation safety with drones. It is very clear and very tough but there is nothing in the planning laws. We think that the national framework will hopefully clear up some things.”

Expanding to Finland and the Middle East

Two weeks ago, Manna Air Delivery announced that it had teamed up with VTT, one of Europe’s leading research institutions, on a Finnish-Irish research collaboration.

“The goal is to bring downtown services closer to residents, potentially even to their doorstep. This could mean food, medicine, lab samples, or other everyday deliveries currently handled by bike couriers or vans. When logistics becomes simpler and faster, it opens new doors for completely novel types of business,” Timo Lind, principal scientist at VTT, said at the time.

I asked Healy about overseas expansion, and he told me that Manna was also eying other markets in Europe, as well as the Middle East. Ireland, he said, is a priority but it will go more overseas if forced to.

“Ireland is a Goldilocks country where, if you can get it right here, you can get it right anywhere. But if we are blocked from flying, of course we will have to move, but that’s not what we want to do,” he said. 

“We want to build a world-leading innovative company that was started in Ireland, rather than sitting back and doing nothing, and waiting for the Amazons and the Googles of this world to do it for us. We are a world leader in a trillion-dollar space. We should go for it.”