Manna has appointed former DAA chief executive Kenny Jacobs as executive chairman and president, four weeks after the Irish drone delivery company grounded its home-market fleet and pointed its growth plans at the United States and the United Kingdom. The company said Jacobs arrives as it shifts focus to markets where regulation and local planning are “ready to support drone delivery.”

I have covered Manna since 2020, when founder Bobby Healy flew medication to isolated Irish residents during the first COVID lockdowns. Reading this announcement, one detail stands out to me above the job title: Ireland’s most successful drone company just hired the man who ran Ireland’s airports, and his mandate is to grow the business everywhere except Ireland.

Jacobs stepped down as chief executive of DAA, the state operator of Dublin and Cork airports, in February 2026 after settling a lawsuit he had brought against the company following a rift with its board. Before DAA, he was chief marketing officer at Ryanair during the airline’s digital expansion, with earlier roles at Tesco and Metro Group.

Jacobs Brings Airline and Airport Scaling Experience to a Drone Operator

Kenny Jacobs joins Manna as executive chairman and president with a track record of scaling aviation, retail, and digital businesses across international markets, a profile Bobby Healy says the company needs as it enters commercial expansion in the US and UK. Healy said the role gives Manna “the experience at scaling up operations and commercial partnerships,” according to the announcement reported by the Irish Examiner.

Jacobs called Manna “one of the most exciting companies coming out of Ireland in a generation.” His hire follows a $50 million Series B round closed on April 1, 2026, led by ARK Invest, the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, and Schooner Capital, with participation from Coca-Cola HBC and Molten Ventures. The round brought Manna’s total funding to $110 million. Founded in 2018, the company has completed more than 300,000 deliveries across Ireland, Finland, and Texas, and DroneXL examined Manna’s claimed per-flight profitability in detail last year.

The Hire Lands One Month After Manna Grounded Its Irish Operations

Manna announced in June that it would cease drone deliveries in Ireland, citing regulatory and planning roadblocks, and described the move as a strategic pause rather than a permanent withdrawal. The decision came weeks after Fingal County Council refused retention permission for the company’s Coolmine hub, a refusal DroneXL covered when Manna pointed to a Trinity College noise study in its defence.

The company told the Irish Times and other outlets that it already holds operational authorization in the US and UK, and that Ireland remains its base for research, engineering, manufacturing, and corporate functions, employing close to 200 people. That framing matches what DroneXL reported from XPONENTIAL Detroit in May, when Healy announced a Tulsa manufacturing expansion and a personal relocation to Oklahoma.

The Jacobs appointment adds a second heavyweight aviation figure to Manna’s orbit this year. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford visited Manna’s Dublin headquarters in January to study the company’s European operating model while the Part 108 BVLOS rule works through the American system.

DroneXL’s Take

Look at the sequence of 2026 for Manna. January: the FAA Administrator flies to Dublin to learn from its operation. March: it simulates blood delivery between Dublin hospitals. April: a $50 million round wrapped in “Ireland is the foundation of everything we do” messaging. May: Tulsa. June: Irish fleet grounded after a planning refusal. July: an executive chairman hired to scale the US and UK. That is not a company drifting. That is a company being pushed, one planning decision at a time, out of the country that built it.

The bitter irony is who Manna hired. Jacobs ran DAA, the state company that operates Ireland’s biggest aviation infrastructure. Ireland’s planning system could not accommodate a drone hub that fits in a few parking spaces, and now the man who managed its airports will spend his energy opening American and British skies instead. Ireland is exporting the technology and the executive talent in the same press release.

I keep coming back to a point I made after the Coolmine refusal: Manna’s drones did not fail in Ireland. The safety record held, the noise impact was independently modelled by Trinity College researchers, the customers kept ordering. What failed was a planning framework written for road traffic being applied to aircraft, with a National Drone Framework announced by the Irish government last year and still not implemented. Whether that framework arrives before Manna’s “strategic pause” hardens into a permanent exit is the thing to watch. Jacobs was not hired to wait for Dublin. He was hired because Washington and London stopped making Manna wait.

Source: Irish Examiner

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.