In this pitch delivered at the Spanish Pavilion during ExpoSpain, José Miguel Bermúdez, CEO of AmforBlue, presents the company’s climate‑tech solution for the maritime sector: the eSail, a rigid suction‑sail system that provides wind‑assisted propulsion to cut fuel consumption and emissions. He outlines the double challenge facing shipping—high fuel costs (up to 36% of operating expenses) and tightening environmental regulations—then explains how delivering 20% of a vessel’s propulsive force translates into a 20% reduction in fuel use and pollutants. The talk showcases pilot installations (a 12‑m unit on a Panamanian fishing vessel and a foldable unit in Santander, Spain), highlights the market opportunity across tankers, bulk carriers, ro‑ro vessels, passenger ferries/cruises, and fishing fleets (covering 75‑80% of the global fleet), and details AmforBlue’s commercial strategy of securing flagship projects in each segment. The team of 23 multinational experts, backed by investors and institutions such as the European Investment Fund, CDTI, and ENISA, has already raised €10 million and is preparing an €18 million growth round to scale in Europe, Asia‑Pacific, and the Middle East (particularly the UAE/Dubai). The presentation concludes with a call for additional funding to accelerate market penetration.
Chapters
Okay, so buenos días, good morning. And first of all, thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to be here today, and especially thanks to CDTI, the Spanish Pavilion, and all the Spanish institutions. I'm sorry, yeah, and all the Spanish institutions that are here today. My name is José Miguel, I'm the CEO of— yeah, we're talking. Okay, now it's better. Let's see now. Yeah, okay. So yeah, my name is José Miguel Bermúdez. I'm the CEO of AmforBlue, and as you can see here, we are working on decarbonizing maritime transport industry. We are a climate change startup, and as you can read here, our— we are delivering fully automated wind-assisted propulsion systems to reduce both the fuel consumption and the level of pollutant emissions of the maritime transport industry with this specially designed rigid sail system that you can see here. Just to give you some general information about, about our company, apart from several private investors, we have support from the European Investment Fund, from the European Commission, also support from CDTI, ENISA, and other institutions of the Spanish government. I'm very proud of having Highly awarded team, you can see here. And just to give you some facts about our company, we have a fully protected technology, several patents around the world, validated solution, and we already acquired the first paying customers, which is absolutely important for us, checking also about the industry where we are, where we are working. So going now to the main problem, the shipping industry is nowadays facing a double challenge. The first one is the huge fuel consumption they have, which can reach tons of fuel per hour, and it can reach easily values between 36% of the total operating expenses of a ship operator, which is a very relevant number. And the second challenge they are facing is the appearance of a tighter environmental legislation on pollution issues that is forcing the ship owners and ship operators to use less pollutant but much more expensive fuels. This is a huge problem for them. And this solution that we are launching into the market, as simple as that, bringing sailing back to shipping. And that's exactly probably the same thing that we have been doing for the last, I don't I don't know, 3,000 or 4,000 units probably. So it's very simple. And how we do it, how it works, the main idea is that with the system that we have designed with these sails, we are delivering a part of the propelling force that we need. For example, if you have a vessel that has to go at 12 knots, we are— and if we deliver 20% of the propelling force that we need to go at 12 knots, that means that we are reducing the 20%— by 20% the fuel consumption and proportionally also reducing by 20% the pollutant emissions that the ship is delivering to our atmosphere. So at the end of the day, it's very simple. It's a sail. It's a little bit particular. This is our technology, what we call eSail. It's based on the suction sail concept. And here you can see the first unit that we delivered for our customers. In this case, it's a 12-meter unit that was retrofitted in a fishing vessel in Panama during the last summer, and it has been operating since. So, Mario, And just to give you all some information about the market, the shipping industry is a key industry for all our economies because it's responsible for transporting around 80% of the worldwide cargo, and it's constantly growing. So it's a key industry for, for practically for all our economies in the world. And we are really focusing on the segments that you can see here: number 1, tankers; number 2, bulk carriers; number 3, ro-ro vessels; And number 4, passenger vessels, ferries and cruises. And these segments represent between 75% and 80% of the existing fleet. Probably we can add here also the fishing, the fishing industry. And this is giving us a multi— as you can imagine, a multi-billion market. And probably I think that we are working, as you can imagine, in one of the most global and international industries. And how we do it? First, number one, with a world-class team. We are today 23 people in the team, and we're going see, we have multidisciplinary team with people from Spain, from France, from Morocco, from Italy, or from the United States. We are mainly based on Spain nowadays. Number 2, uh, what about our commercial strategy? So we are building our strategy, our growth through successful consortiums and pilot projects with top-level international players, thinking about shipowners and our customers, shipowners, but also thinking about our supply chain and our strategic partners, as you can see, as you can see here. And our market penetration strategy is mainly based, mainly based on delivering projects, on delivering at least 1 or 2 installations for every single segment that is interesting for us from the market point of view. So you can see here fishing vessels, general cargo, propulsor ferries, tankers, and bulkers. This is the first one, so the first one is already done for the fishing industry. It's the first unit, the 1,200 units that we retrofitted in Panama 7 months ago. This is the second one, the second one that we retrofitted just a couple of months ago in Santander in Spain. Here you can see that this system is even foldable; it's suitable for the ship deck. And now the next step is to it's to sign and lease. And probably I think that these agreements will be signed in less than a month or a month and a half to cover the remaining segments, these three segments that you can see here. In this case, with two European top leading ship owners, and probably the bulker case will be done with Japanese. with a very relevant Japanese shipowner. So we are very, very close to signing these agreements. And I think that this industry, it's probably a traditional industry, a conservative industry, but at the same time it has a huge scalability because usually the shipowners, they don't have only 1, 2, or 3 vessels in their fleet. Usually they have tens of vessels or even hundreds of vessels in the fleet. And this is very important for us because it's offering a huge scalability for a company like One for Blue just with one single industry. And why now? So the first point, if you remember the previous slide, is because of the 2 main challenges that we have: huge fuel consumption and the appearance of a tighter environmental legislation, pollution issues. But also because the market is responding, and I think that this picture, it's very clear. So the maritime startup sector is expanding exponentially. Here you can see the M&A activity from 2016 to 2020 in the maritime startup sector, which is quite relevant. So just to, to, to give you some information about The next steps. You can see here we started with the R&D, prototyping, sea trials, and now we are scaling up our technology and why we are here today. So the main point is that we will need additional funding for our growth phase to scale up the technology. Until now we have raised around €10 million of private and public funding, and the next round that we will launch probably in the next 3 or 4 months is a funding round of €18 million. How long do And you think it will take to get to market? of course, the positive point here is that around 60% is already covered. Very good. And the next step is probably why we are here today. We are here today because our commercial strategy for the near future, we will be focused mainly on 3 regions in the world. Number one is Europe, and of course, as you can imagine, we are based on Spain. The other one is the Asia-Pacific region, which is very relevant from the, from the label of our From the shipping industry point of view, and the third one is Middle East. And that's a big reason why particularly UAE, United Arab Emirates, and in this case Dubai—you can see Dubai in the slides—but I think that we can easily extend it to all the to all the Emirates. It's a very interesting reason for us for several reasons. So the first one is because the maritime industry is a priority for the government here. Because just for example here in Dubai represents approximately 7% of the GDP of the area, which is quite relevant. The number 2, and probably one of the most important, is that is because it's at its strategic geographical position. And probably as you can imagine, there are a lot of— they have a lot of vessels, a lot of ships here, especially tankers. So it's a very strategic location for us. And number 3, because it's a very business-friendly area that is very interesting for us. So probably just please accompany, accompany him. Okay, I think that that's all. Thank you very much.
