Page 47 - Linkline Autumn 2015

sTudenT sCooPs PrIze WITh unIque unIBox
L-R: Stephen Sweeney, Finbarr Cleary FCILT, Robert Ryan, Richard Butler CMILT, and James Ryan CMILT
It is often the case that full-time students of any courses in college can nd it dif cult to balance their time between their studies, part-time jobs and friends
whilst living the college life and enjoying themselves. Attempting to develop a product commercially whilst doing all of this may appear as being quite a dif cult task then, however, Stephen Sweeney, a 20 year old full-time student of the BSc Logistics & Supply Chain Management course at Dublin Institute of Technology, is attempting to do exactly this.
At the moment he is developing a product called Unibox, a hygienic cargo protection system with potential markets ranging from the medical industry to other industries such as meat processing. Stephen drew from his experience in the family business, working with a large national newspaper distributor and his course learnings in DIT to develop the Unibox concept. The
idea began in development after winning rst prize at the CILT Eastern Section Student Transport and Logistics idea of the year awards in March 2014. After this competition Stephen continued to develop the idea and in September 2014 entered the idea into Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur (IBYE) competition, which is run by the Local Enterprise Of ce. At the Sligo county stage of
the competition, Stephen won the Best New Idea category, which provided him with a fund of €10,000 to develop the idea into a business.
From a very early stage Stephen’s brother-in-law, Jason Mulrooney helped with developing the idea, providing input and advice on the product from his experience running his own successful distribution business;
JM Distributions, which sub-contracts to a large national distributor of indigenous newspapers. Stephen had recognised that he was not going to be able to develop the idea by himself as he was going to be in full-time education for at least another three years and felt that Jason had a very important role to play in the development, and could draw from his existing business acumen and experience as an entrepreneur to allow the pair to develop the product successfully.
Unibox has a collapsible design to minimise oor space and load space when not in use, reducing reverse logistics costs for potential customers.
The product is made from High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) plastic, a rigid and durable material which prevents bacterial contaminants from growing or proliferating. The product offers protection from physical contaminants such as dust particles or other air-borne physical matters and prevents cross-contamination between goods during storage and transportation. Unibox also provides physical protection from physical forces relating to shifting cargo during transit and prevents collapse of the palletised goods.
A research by Deloitte in 2008 suggested that shrink-wrap was breaking or bursting 3 to 7 times per roll on average, which signals that this packaging material is not up to the task of protecting or containing goods during transit
32 The CharTered InsTITuTe of LogIsTICs & TransporT
UNIBOX PRESENTATION