The company starts its first round of financing of up to 150,000 euros and contacts shipping companies to put 300 units into circulation in 2017
The Valencian startup Navlandis has just opened its first round of financing in search of local investors. The firm that has designed an innovative folding maritime container initially aspires to collect between 125,000 and 150,000 euros, with the aim of definitively launching the project.
After having the prototype almost ready, Navlandis wants to use this capital to accelerate the commercialization activity and launch the product on the market. At the moment, with the investment meetings held, the investment expectations are completely covered due to the interest generated, the company points out. However, they are in talks with various funds that have also expressed their interest in studying the project.
Contacts with BigBan Angels, a Valencian entity with a hundred partners that groups accelerators, bussines angels, venture capital funds, investor clubs, etc., already started last Tuesday.
After seducing the Port Authority of Valencia with a project that endows the environment of the Port with a shine of entrepreneurship and R&D, the objective of the company led by Miguel Navalón is now to conquer the shipping companies. On the second half of the year, Navlandis plans to present the container at the facilities of the Port of Valencia.
Rotterdam fair in November
Navlandis also aims to attend the international fair of the sector, which is held in Rotterdam (Netherlands) in November, to expose the product. The firm’s plans are ambitious. Navlandis was developed at Climate-KIC, accelerator of the European Union led by the association of renewable energy companies (Avaesen), whose president is Marcos Lacruz, who serves as a counsellor for the company and plans to participate in the financing round.
For 2017, the company has the objective of placing around 300 units on the market so that large shipping companies begin testing the container. With those numbers, Navlandis would be valued at close to four million euros, and would aspire to a larger round of investment, around 400,000 euros, and future rounds with higher objectives.
Its CEO, Miguel Navalón, is convinced that this folding container can be revolutionary for the sector. As he explains, the current cost of moving an empty container to a place where it is needed is about $ 500. That repositioning can be cut in half. In the space occupied by an empty container, five folded containers fit.
Dutch competition
There is already a Dutch company that has launched a similar container. However, it acquires special interest for the shipping companies that operate in the Port of Valencia, leader in container traffic. At the moment, it is estimated that there is a world park of maritime containers of 40 million units (TEU’s), and in 2014 the shipping companies bought 5 million new containers, a market in which Navlandis seeks its position.
Navalón assures that the folding container that they will launch on the market “will have the same resistance as a conventional one, and it will be able to be manipulated with the machinery that any merchandise port has, and with the minimum human resources, to make operational costs competitive”, adding that the world container market “amounts to about 12 trillion dollars a year”.
