GENÜS

Ocean wave powered refrigeration device for onboard fishery catch preservation

Unlike fisheries in the developed countries where most of the fishing boats or vessels are equipped with refrigeration system, in developing countries like Indonesia, due to lack of both capital and operating expenditure, most of the fishing boat is not equipped with refrigeration unit to maintain the quality of the catch during fishing period. Hence the only way to preserve the catch, they will buy the block ice from some suppliers and store it into the cold storage box to be used during the fishing period and transport. 

This is the expensive way of preservation and time consuming that being a problem, especially for small and low income fishermen in the remote area that far from both block ice producers and suppliers. Even in some places, the price of the block ice could be two fold rather than the normal price. 

GENÜS is a new clean tech based device that coming up to solve the following challenges:

• Block ice requirement for catch preservation has cause higher operating cost
• Existing onboard conventional refrigeration system is less efficient and not eco friendly
• Fishery industries need more cost efficiency for sustainability
• Lost profit affected by quality degradation of the catches due to poor preservation Most of coastal communities that livelihood as fishermen still live in low income

GENÜS is a new innovative clean tech based refrigeration device that converts free and clean ocean wave energy into mechanical energy to create chilling effect through sea water as a cooling medium to directly preserve the catches to avoid significant lost of profit caused by the quality degradation of the catches.

Hence with free and clean energy, GENÜS will help many fishermen and fishery industries worldwide to be more cost efficient, more profit, and sustainable in eco friendly way.

With combination between renewable energy technology and engineering of refrigeration system, GENÜS could be designed and manufactured in custom-built for various cooling capacity based on the requirement and various size of fishing boat or vessel, easy for installation and maintenance, and the most important is low Capex and Opex.

GENÜS is engineered and designed to be manufactured at low production cost according to the following strategies:

• Could be manufactured with existing components or parts that have already available in the market
• Could be manufactured with existing tool-shop facilities

We have completed the detail design and are currently in the testing of the initial prototype. Once the GENÜS prototype successfully tested, we will continue to do some fund-raising to build the biggest capacity prototype for further testing. It was targeted to be commercialized by February 2019.

Our goals in the next 12 months are as the followings:

• June 2018 to Oct 2018: Prototype test and improvement
• Nov 2018 to Jan 2018: Fund rising
• Feb 2019 to May 2019: Start for production and marketing at phase-1 for small scale user

According to statistical data from Indonesian>span class="st"> Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS), there are 8,090 coastal area with about 4 million fishermen. There are 143,125 non-powered fishing boat, 246,882 outboard motor powered fishing boat, and 178,132 inboard motor powered fishing boat.

The use GENÜS device will help the small scale fishermen save about IDR 1,575,000/month/boat while for medium scale fishermen will save about IDR 11,250,000/month/boat. GENÜS is targeted to be deployed at 5% of the above number of boats in next three years and to be increased to 10% in the next five years.

We will be manufacturing and marketing GENÜS device to our customers directly as long as their location are still accessible by our team, while for those who are in separated island would be accessed for deployment by having a cooperation with local partners. Some of our potential partners for the deployment of GENÜS device are local cooperative stores, local fishermen associations, and local government.

Our solution is still in prototyping and testing phase for validation and improvement before proceed to mass production and marketing. Hence we have not been serving our customers at this time. However as described on previous section, in Indonesia only, the number of fishing boats we are going to serve are as the following: 

143,125 non-powered fishing boat, 246,882 outboard motor-powered fishing boat, and 178,132 inboard motor-powered fishing boats.

We serve our customers by facilitating them with GENÜS device to achieve their operating cost efficiency and help them increase profit by maintaining good quality catches.

Based on the planning to achieve 5% market in next 3 years, there will be 85,221 people would be served within the next 3 years or equal to about 28,407 people in 12 months. Total fishing boats to be equipped with GENÜS device is about 9,469 units. We sell GENÜS device to our customers.

GENÜS was formed by the following key persons:

• Tonie Yanto Fanggi Mbuik: Founder

Professional and experienced mechanical engineer with knowledge and
skill in product design and renewable energy technology for more than
five years.

• Muis Septiadi: Co founder

Trained and experienced project engineer from design, fabrication to
installation and commissioning of various mechanical rotating equipment.

• Aline Fibriyanti: Marketing officer

With her background in marketing officer will support our future organization in marketing.

• Evienia Prabawanti: Finance officerEvienia has more than eight years of experience in business administration and finance management

Our business activities are consisting of manufacturing, marketing and after sales service such as spare part supply for our customers. Our business will be generating revenue through two main sources:

• Profit from selling GENÜS device
• Profit from selling the spare part as part of after sales service

According to the statistical data on number of fishing boat in Indonesia, the business we are going to run could be  positioned for long-term sustainability and profitability, moreover if we expand to another country worldwide.

We are applying to MIT Solve to build business network and getting further support from MIT Solve community or experts in order to realization of the idea.

As a new small team in clean tech business with inadequate resources, especially in capital could be quite difficult and take time longer for its commercialization. Through support from MIT Solve the barriers could be solved.