What is the BlueInvest Project Pipeline?
See our showcase of innovative projects and entrepreneurs who are shaping the Blue Economy.
Projects consist of innovative, scalable and sustainable business ventures from traditional and emerging sectors of the maritime economy.
The graphs below provide an overview of the country distribution, sector, and TRL of projects currently listed in the BlueInvest Project Pipeline.
Selection Criteria:
Your company is EU-based or from an eligible sea basin region (Georgia, Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova, Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Mauritania, United Kingdom, or Norway)
Your project TRL is 4 or higher
Your project sector is in one of the 10 blue economy sectors identified for this initiative
Your solution has a clear sustainable impact on the blue economy
Your project is looking for investment
Project Country
Country in which the project is being developed and / or implemented.
Project Sector
Main blue economy sector the project relates to.
Project TRL
Current technology readiness level of the project.
SpotVessels GmbH
Zlatozara Zlatkova is the Managing Director of SpotVessels and brings years of experience in the IWT shipping business. She has a BSc in Logistics and took a professional qualification for freight forwarders at WIFI, Vienna. Stoyan Mantchorov graduated with a master's degree in Economics from University College London. According to the QS ranking, UCL is among the top 10 global universities. In addition, Stoyan is an experienced serial entrepreneur and a start-up investor. Robert holds a master's degree in Screendesign from Kingston University London. He has many years of experience as a front-end developer, designer and communication manager. He also coordinated several IT projects. Among his customers are companies such as IKEA, Microsoft and T-Mobile. Miglena holds a doctor's degree in Economics and a master's degree in Intellectual property. Miglena works as a university professor at UNWE, Sofia, and also consults businesses in intellectual property protection.
Accessible market. SpotVessels offers a more transparent shipping market, a larger number of options for transport service providers, and uncomplicated procedures for everybody. Bundling shipments with several carriers, automatically offering free barge capacities to various customers, or selling slots on chartered vessels improve the efficiency of inland waterway transport and reduce the costs for both sides. Faster transactions at a lower cost. We offer shippers and carriers the chance to automatically contract IWT transport deals between each other quickly, easily, and cost-efficiently. Easy to use smart data. SpotVessels offers a smart IWT marketplace but also structured access to hydrological, GPS, and market data, which is used in our models in order to optimize fleets' performance and transportation costs. Cost efficiency is based on transparent pricing. SpotVessels is reducing the transaction costs of finding, booking, and executing IWT logistics services by offering transparent pricing. All participants have access to pricing data and a full overview of current offers.
The inland waterway sector needs to be modernized, and its share in the general transport mix has to be increased. We believe that it is almost too late for it. All other transport sectors constantly modernize themselves. They use various platforms, making them even more competitive. The transport sector offering the lowest prices and environmental impact stays closed and resistant to change. If that doesn't improve, the share of inland waterway transport will further diminish. Many small businesses will disappear, and the total costs of industrial production in the EU will increase. The modernization of inland waterway transport is on the
political agenda. The increase of its share in the total transport mix is part of the Green Deal. The old generation of managers has slowly succeeded by the new one. The need for modernization is visible to everybody in the sector. Therefore now is the right time to start new disruptive business models. The solution was designed from a skipper perspective for the skippers to better solve the problems we experienced.
For example:
1)To find and automatically contract cargo offered directly by large industrial producers! - currently done via email or phone.
2)To get fair and transparent pricing! - very difficult for the small players.
3)To be warned if the cargo volume or weight may be inappropriate and should be reduced to increase efficiency! - N/A
4)To be warned about possible delays due to the current or expected hydrological conditions! - N/A
5)To get fair and accurately calculated high or low water compensations! - N/A
6)To be warned about issues that may prevent a ship to reach the port of loading or the port of discharging on time! - N/A
7)To get easy access to various documents that may be required by ports and border authorities! - N/A
8)To optimize free loading capacities based on an automated offering process and inland waterway transport optimization model! - N/A