Evaptainers

YASSINE MAGHNOUJ , MARKETING DIRECTOR MOROCCO 

Yassine has a passion for social enterprise and business development. He has worked for CONSTELLIUM to develop the Chaque Canette Compte recycling project in France, and also ran his own clothing business in Morocco and English School in China. Trilingual, Yassine graduated with master’s degrees both in France and China in Marketing and Sales and in Marketing and Innovation. Specialized in consumer behavior and market analysis, he also holds a certificate in PMBOK project management.

We invented the world’s first mobile “zero-energy” refrigeration solution. It is a refrigerator that requires no external electricity to operate, making it ideal for low-income, off-grid areas. Our refrigerator uses evaporative cooling, a technique has been employed successfully for centuries in products like the Pot-in-Pot refrigerator or Coolgardie safe. Proven to be effective for cooling at the point of production, these devices have been known to triple or quadruple the shelf-life of most products. 

There is a need for refrigeration. We’ve talked to dozens of people in rural Morocco that complain about their financial losses from spoiled food. The UN estimates spoilage rates up to 45% for fruits and vegetables, with a total loss of $4 billion dollars in Africa annually.

We use modular shipping crates called Evaptainers that employ evaporative cooling to preserve produce during transport. Our innovative but basic appropriate technology will target some of the common challenges experienced in agricultural supply chains: high temperatures, dehydration of produce, short shelf-life, contamination, and mechanical bruising. Using the physical phenomenon of evaporative cooling, we can achieve a significant cooling effect for a fraction of the price of a traditional reefer container. Evaptainers essentially consist of a breathable crate with a storage container nested inside. Between the crate and the container is an evaporative media that is supplied with water by a tank and dripper mounted atop the crate. When water is evaporated from the media into ambient air, latent heat is carried by evaporation from the reservoir into the surrounding environment, reducing temperatures in the reservoir up to 10-15 degrees Celsius.

We are hopeful that Evaptainer will have positive impacts for a variety of actors involved in the agricultural value chain. The most obvious impact is that smallholder farmers and urban distributors would benefit from reduced spoilage - this means increased incomes overall. Because this invention also extends produce shelf life, farmers would be allowed greater freedom in deciding when to sell. Urban consumers will be able to get better quality food for lower prices. Developing country governments benefit from reduced dependence on food imports and better trade balances. Truck drivers and logistics providers benefit from a new technology that allows them to add additional services. In short, though our intervention is aimed at benefiting smallholder farmers, a variety of other actors in society could benefit as well.

Our primary goal as an organization is to provide affordable refrigeration to those that currently lack it. We see this goal as intrinsically tied to the goal of reaching a world with zero hunger, because refrigeration is essential to feeding people.

Participating with the Elevate prize would help us fast track our global impact. Specifically, we would be interested in partnering with some of the previous Innovation Projects, such as the Post-Harvest Loss Prevention in E. Africa. We also see a potential use case as an energy saving measure in the Green Kit to provide affordable refrigeration during disaster relief.

Having traveled and worked in developing markets co-founder Quang Truong witnessed both farmers and consumers struggling to contend with post-harvest spoilage of fresh food. Upon further research we found that in developing markets up to 45% of harvested food is lost to post-harvest spoilage with a total annual loss of $4 billion dollars in Africa alone (UN data).

Quang saw producers using evaporative cooling at the point of production with Zeer pots, Pot-in-Pot coolers and Coolgardie safes. While these coolers have been effective at increasing shelf life, the devices are heavy, fragile, and difficult to use (they must be refilled numerous times per day, are unsanitary, and prone to user error).  

I joined Quang at the Ideation Phase in morocco when he was looking for team members to developpe the Idea in Morocco and create a merket fit product , since then I’ve been involved ful time and worked on all the aspect from research, ingeneering, field testing, production, sales ….

All my life I’ve been passionate about entrepreneurship, In my 15s I joined the family business that failed and let me with valuable experience, later on, during the business studies I've been introduced to the socially driven businesses and I felt a great satisfaction knowing that I can do business and help the community at the same time.

Through my work, I want to be part of the thriving of my country by finding affordable solutions to Morocco rural population and promote the entrepreneurship spirit to create shared values.

My real drive and passion come out from my nature, I'm a very social person who loves people and learning about other cultures and my moment of joy is when I help people solving their problems and put a true smile in their faces.

Trilingual I graduated with master’s degrees both in France and China in Marketing and Sales and in Marketing and Innovation. Specialized in consumer behavior and market analysis, I also hold a certificate in PMBOK project management and certified from many entrepreneurs organizations. 

As Manager and marketing director at Evaptainers, we are developing a low-cost electricity free refrigeration system for off-grid, rural areas, and refugee camps, as a socially driven startup my work takes me through many challenges from managing our team in Morocco to operations my duties include also public speaking at medias and events, building partnerships with government officials, conduct study and analysis, build distribution in rural areas and manage our projects in Morocco.

In all these aspects we are dealing with problems every day and as a startup problem solving is a mendatory skill.

In my 15s I joined my family business that failed and let me with valuable experience at 17 years old I started my clothing business in Morocco.

In 2010, I decided to move to France where I get my Master degree in Marketing and Sales and developed the (Chaque Canette Compte) can recycling project.

In 2012 I moved to China and get my second Master degree in Marketing and innovation and started a language School.

In 2015 back to morocco I did short time as a sales engineer with XEROX and get my Project Management certificate I also joined the Evaptainers Team as Marketing Director.

Along the way I’ve written theses about consumer behavior and infant formula milk in Chinese market and worked in many positions as part time or during the summer (foreign relations manager, cashier, language teacher, event organizer, driver, sales man…).

Since then I’ve pitched Evaptainers on several events and won the Second place worldwide on Future Agro tech in Colombia on a Get In the Ring contest I pitched also on the MEDSPRING in Italy and I’ve been a speaker and mentor at the Algeria Entrepreneurship Summer School.

The low cost, portability, and ruggedness of our devices make it ideal for hard to reach areas. Because our device has no moving or electrical components, there is nothing that can break which would render the unit obsolete. Our current model (being tested right now in rural Morocco) is capable of holding 60 liters of produce, weighs less than 3 kgs when empty, and is fully collapsible and flat-packs for easy transit when beneficiaries are on the move

Our beneficiaries are low-income people that live in rural areas with limited access to electricity. They might sell food outside in the market, or be farmers that have trouble keeping food fresh before it’s sold. They might be families with no refrigerators that lose the food they buy to spoilage.

Our company Evaptainer has donated with the help of International agacies 200 units to beneficiaries in Morocco which allow to dicrease the spilage rate by 30% and help them save 10% of there monthy income.

For next year we believe we can hep 40.000 families , knowing that 1 million families lack of refregirators in Morocco.

Because the Evaptainer was designed to be mass produced, larger scales will help lower our production costs. Our goal is to produce our units for ~$15 at scale, giving us a 3x margin between our production costs and sale price to account for overhead. Also, we would open up a secondary product line for outdoor enthusiasts in high-end markets which would return a 5x margin. This revenue stream would allow us to accelerate our expansion into developing world operations.  (500)

Our biggest fear as we scale would come from copycats and imitations. While our IP is reasonably well-protected in the U.S., we do have some concerns about companies in developing countries creating their knock-off versions. 

One fortunate fact is that our technology requires a high degree of technical expertise and that our production methodology is a trade secret, making potential IP violations more difficult. 

We have already partnered with USAID-DIV and Siemens Stiftung to finance field testing in Morocco