ABSTRACT

A Spanish company, born to bring innovation to the transport and logistics sector, has developed a new generation of foldable container to make transport more sustainable. They are searching for companies that normally use containers for transport, and who have unbalanced routes with need of empty containers’ repositioning. The value proposition is to rent them one or more groups of foldable containers for their use, under a commercial agreement that will include its technical assistance.

FULL DESCRIPTION

The Spanish technology-based company was born to bring solutions to the transport and logistics sector. Their first development is a new generation of foldable container to make transport more sustainable.

- Problem addressed by this technology:
Current trade routes around the world are unbalanced. That means that the amount of goods travelling in one way (e.g. Asia to Europe) are not the same than the amount of goods travelling the same way back (e.g. Europe to Asia).
Unbalanced routes cost to the sector around 20 billion dollars and are responsible for the emission of 200 million tons of CO2, as the transport of empty containers amounts to the 25% of total traffic and occupies a space in a depot of around 50% of its shelf life.

- State of art:
These logistic inefficiencies are currently tackled by using one or a combination of two or more of the following strategies:
- Triangulation: Trying to match empty containers with new cargo, minimizing the empty leg
- Pricing: Increasing freight rates in the high demand leg, compensating the empty repositioning cost
- Optimation: Software-based tools trying to avoid the empty movements
- Marketplaces: Internet-based support to reduce costs sharing the idle equipment between different companies
- Sell and buy: The drastic strategy of selling or dropping containers in the surplus areas, while buying new containers in the deficit areas
Although these strategies can reduce the need for empty container repositioning, none of them is capable of eliminating it totally, so repositioning of empties is still a need in the sector, and thus, an inefficiency that can be improved by the use of foldable containers.
Different approaches to foldable containers have been developed during the last 50 years, although none of them have been accepted in the market due to poor performance, pricing and/or difficulties for folding, unfolding and bundling.
Nowadays, the most advanced foldable container has been developed for a 40 feet HC, but the folding and unfolding mechanism requires the use of manual force in addition to standard machinery. Due to its size, only 4 containers can be stacked in the space of 1. Market acceptance of this product is unknown, although it is easy to find evidence on the existence of real units.

- Justification of all the selected cooperation types:
The company is searching for firms normally using containers for transport, and who have unbalanced routes with need of empty containers’ repositioning. The value proposition is to rent those firms one or more groups of fordable containers for their use, under a commercial agreement that will include technical assistance, which includes from the study of the most suitable routes for the container implantation, to the repair of the container in case it suffers from quality deficiencies or malfunctioning of the folding mechanism. It includes training.
The agreement would be based on a “Pay As You Save” model, which means that the cost of the sof the service depends on the savings it produces when compared to the standard containers.

All along the duration of the commercial agreement, training on the first folding, unfolding and bundling processes, and the repair of the container in case it suffers from quality deficiencies or malfunctioning of the folding mechanism are included.