Focused on People: Supporting Everyday Life in Our Suburbs

LAST October Manna Air Delivery proudly sponsored the South Dublin Chamber Business Awards in the Employee of the Year Award category, won by the fantastic Sinead Murphy of AIB.

Great people don’t just think about simply doing a job. They think about making an impact for their colleagues, their customers and their communities.

Manna Air Delivery is an Irish company, founded and headquartered in Dublin, with a team of more than 160 people building a new form of local transport designed specifically for suburban communities.

For residents, it’s simple: people order everyday items from local businesses from books and milk to meals, small gadgets and antigen tests and have them delivered directly to their home.

The real impact is fewer car journeys on busy local roads, which helps reduce congestion and make streets safer.

Using Irish-built aerial vehicles operating under strict aviation and privacy rules, our aim is to help make neighbourhoods more accessible, cleaner and easier places to live.

When people see a Manna aircraft overhead, it’s easy to assume this is about technology.

For us, it’s really about people and everyday life in our suburbs.

In the areas we serve in Dublin we serve 47 local and mostly Independent Irish businesses. In Dublin 15 we have made well over 60,000 deliveries. People use the service to receive very ordinary, everyday items often at moments when time or access really matters.

For local businesses, this can make deliveries viable to compete with large multinationals.

Many of the people who use the service are families juggling work and childcare, older residents, people with mobility challenges, or those without easy access to a car.

We hear from parents trying to manage evenings more smoothly, from people caring for relatives at home, and from residents who simply find it difficult to get out on busy days.

For them, this isn’t about convenience for convenience’s sake. It’s about access, independence, and taking a little pressure out of daily life.

So far we have flown in Finland, Dublin, Galway, Offaly and Texas and create 35 new jobs in each area we move into, all love serving the communities they work in and working on something entirely new and flying the Irish flag while doing so.

Our customers love the service, a petition earlier this year was signed by nearly 6,000 people supporting the growth of our service.

As suburbs grow, there are real challenges around congestion, access and quality of life, and no single service can solve those on its own.

Our role is a modest one, but we believe small, thoughtful solutions can help communities work better day to day – supporting local trade, easing pressure on roads and making suburban life a little more liveable.

That’s what we’re focused on, and that’s the role our team is committed to playing.