Manna Aero Sets Sights on Major US Expansion
Manna Aero, the Ireland-based autonomous drone delivery startup, is gearing up for a significant expansion in the United States. The company’s Founder and CEO, Bobby Healy, recently revealed that Manna Aero will be establishing a U.S. operations and manufacturing center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which will create approximately 1,000 jobs over the next few years.
Source: techcrunch.com
The construction of the factory is already underway, and Healy expects manufacturing to begin there in about a year. In the meantime, the company will focus on scaling its operations team to around 200 to 300 people within the next 12 months. The pace of hiring at the factory will depend on the rate of growth outside of Tulsa, as Manna Aero is currently assessing six other U.S. cities for potential expansion. If all goes well, the company plans to enter those cities by the end of 2027.
According to Healy, the U.S. expansion is driven by the size of the market, consumer behavior, and the fact that aggregators like DoorDash, Uber Eats have consolidated the market so well. The United States has the market that everybody wants, Healy emphasized.
Manna Aero operates automated, remotely monitored drones that don’t land. Instead, they lower the package on a tether, using the same technique employed by Wing and Zipline. The company has a hybrid business model, which includes delivery-as-a-service, charging per flight. Manna Aero also partners with companies like DoorDash, Deliveroo, and Uber Eats in Europe, as well as direct partnerships with businesses and its own consumer-facing app.
Although Manna Aero is still headquartered in Ireland, where its R&D, administrative, and manufacturing operations are based, the company has pulled back its drone delivery operations in the country due to a lack of planning regulations that would allow it to scale there. Instead, Manna Aero is putting its capital and resources into the United States.
The company has hired former Ryanair CMO Kenny Jacobs as its executive chair and president to drive the expansion. Healy credits the Trump administration’s and the FAA’s policies for giving the industry a ‘turbo boost’ in the country. ‘It’s trickling down into raw investment,’ Healy said. ‘A company like us, we wouldn’t have had any plans to grow in the United States until the environment was ready from a regulatory standpoint to start growth, and so we’ve decided very clearly that now is the time for us to put every penny we have into the USA.’
Healy pointed to the growth at Amazon, Wing, and Zipline over the past year as evidence of those policies. ‘We’re probably slightly behind the curve, but we’ll catch up quickly,’ he said. Manna Aero isn’t entirely new to the United States, having begun operating in 2023 in the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone, part of a planned community near Dallas, Texas, developed by the real estate development company Hillwood. The company has expanded into the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area and plans to continue to scale there over the next year.
The end goal is to turn Manna Aero into a major U.S. drone delivery operator that competes with Zipline, Amazon, and Google’s Wing, among others. The company is optimistic about its prospects in the U.S. market and is committed to making significant investments to achieve its goals.
