Cardboard casket – a good business idea?

Ideal for humanitarian relief areas and natural catastrophes

It is cheap, biodegradable and good for burning, but can you use corrugated cardboard for making caskets? A participating team in the Venture Cup finals think so.

- Our idea is not typical of the participants in the Venture Cup but we are actually proud of the fact that we have succeeded in making a business plan for a casket. Because of the number of advantages to the material it is ideal for use in humanitarian relief areas and in connection with natural catastrophes – says Julie Heyde, one of the three participants in the final team.

She and Kristian Søttrup are enrolled in the MSc/Master of Science in Economics and Business Administration programme SMC while the last participant on the team, Henriette Søttrup is an industrial designer.

The team participates in the Develop Solution competition, an offshoot of the Venture Cup competition. The purpose is to get students to develop business plans that have both business potential as well as development potential. That means the projects have the potential of contributing to a positive development in third world countries thereby helping achieve one or more of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.

From caskets to toys

All together four final groups in Venture Cup have participants from CBS on their team. Among them are BAKOBA that have developed construction toys in foam. With these toys children can make models in all directions, figures or even models that function as furniture. The primary target group is caretaking institutions and the toys have both a social and a pedagogical aspect.

Venture Cup

Venture Cup is the common business plan competition at universities for students, employees and candidates with good ideas and business dreams. Participants get the opportunity to try out their entrepreneurial skills and test whether their ideas could become successful businesses. They get coaching and feedback from a professional jury.

The two other groups with CBS participants on their team are MicroReactor that develop microreactors for the chemical industry and the team StudieCom that develops learning systems.