Interview with Miguel Navalón, co-founder and CEO, Navlandis

The EIT Awards recognises the most promising entrepreneurs and innovators in Europe. Seven Climate KIC community members have been nominated for the 2018 edition.

We spoke to Miguel Navalón, co-founder and CEO, Navlandis, who’s eligible to win the EIT Venture Award and the EIT Public Aware.

What’s your role?

I’m the Co-founder and CEO of Navlandis. Furthermore, I am the inventor of our innovative foldable container Zbox®.

With more than 15 years of experience in different professional projects, I integrate knowledge in business (strategy and management) with technology. Integrated into a team of engineers, I offer the business skills to lead the decision-making, setting out the goals, and transmitting the vision of the company.

What are you working on with Climate KIC?

When I committed to this new business initiative, it was a great challenge to face too. It was amazing to start this new venture focused on the logistics sector. We aimed to make global transport more sustainable, a goal totally aligned with Climate-KIC’s strategic priorities and goals.

We are developing an innovative new model of foldable shipping container, called Zbox®.

ZBox® is a disruptive foldable container, which reduces the volume of the container by folding it when empty, allowing 5 containers to be placed in the space of 1, resulting savings in the economic and environmental impact of repositioning empty containers.

We started working with Climate KIC participating with the idea in Climate-Launchpad. It was the first step to believe in the idea. We gained the access to Climate-KIC Accelerator, where we developed the business feasibility and gained notoriety to reach the investment step. Now, we are participating in other complementary activities of the Climate KIC Community. We have always received the support of Climate KIC to develop and scale the business project, to success in the goals of the company.  

What are three implications of this work?

The environmental impact of transport is globally significant.

Due to the trade imbalances of the global transport, the global empty container traffic accounts for 25 per cent of the total. The final impact of repositioning empty containers is 20 billion dollars per year in cost (Handbook of Ocean Container Transport Logistics, 2015), and additional emissions of CO2.

The mission of Navlandis is to improve the efficiency and sustainability of the global transport by innovation and our first product, Zbox® is a new patented foldable container which can save 20 per cent of these CO2 emissions.

In addition, sea containers spend half their useful life empty in depots, causing a major problem in port cities that need large areas to store them. Zbox® save 80 per cent of the space needed in storage and transport, and could improve the efficient use of the port areas.

Finally, we aim to introduce innovation in the logistics chain, so Zbox® is only the first project. We would like to implement a complete research and development program, to develop new innovative projects, making transport more sustainable.

What or who gives you hope or inspiration in the fight against climate change?

The idea emerged when seeing the landscape of empty containers in the urban area of the port of Valencia.

The storage of empty containers presents a major challenge in port cities that need large areas to store them. Studying further the impact of the matter, we saw the big size of the problem.

We wanted to develop our idea, and Climate KIC gave us the possibility of building a business project from the idea to our company.