One of the world’s most successful drone delivery companies will be expanding to mainland Europe and the United States in 2023. Manna Aero has already done over 100,000 drone deliveries in multiple locations in Ireland and is trending to hit over 1,000 deliveries per day in individual dense urban markets.
But it won’t be instantly available everywhere.
With the average premium for door-to-door delivery of food now at 50-60%, and with much of that food showing up in 20 or 30 minutes in less-than-perfect condition, there’s pressure to make drone delivery more widely available.
Manna’s plan is to attack dense urban centers in the U.S. Its experience in Europe, where urban density is significantly higher than in most of the United States, gives it an advantage in bringing drone delivery to American cities. Manna Aero is currently flying over urban densities of 10,000 people per square mile, he says, which is more dense than San Francisco.
Each Manna Aero drone does 7-8 deliveries an hour at 50 miles/hour at a cost of roughly one-tenth a human driver in a car. The company’s latest drone, the X-drone, carries about 7.5 pounds of cargo, flying deliveries within a relatively small radius: perhaps up to five miles, and returning home when battery consumption reaches 60%.
Google sister company Wing is probably leading drone delivery in the U.S., right now, running deliveries in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in addition to other locations in the U.S. and globally. Amazon’s drone delivery efforts are evolving slowly in comparison.
But Manna Aero is approaching a roughly similar scale to Wing, and has demonstrated the ability to do 2,000 to 3,000 flights/day across its multiple locations.
Forbes.com, John Koetsier
