Five students from the Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Indonesia (FTUI) won 3rd place in the 2022 ACCESS Business Plan Competition in Renewable Energy (BPCRE). This team is under the guidance of a Lecturer in the FTUI Mechanical Engineering Department, Dr. Eng. Arnas Lubis, S.T., M.T. and consists of Bianca Natasha Prasetya (Mechanical Engineering 2019), Muhammad Helmy Yusuf (Mechanical Engineering 2019), M. Nafiza Reyhananda (Mechanical Engineering 2019), Sharon Cecilya (Shipping Engineering 2019), and Kevin Dristian Dani (Mechanical Engineering 2020).
In this competition, students are required to provide their creative ideas and ideas regarding the business world that are related to the availability of access to electricity, and to help rural communities to develop businesses in the village according to the local context. In this competition, four business categories can be selected to be developed, namely food and beverages, services, environmentally friendly products, and local handicraft products.
Bianca and the team chose to develop a business category project for eco-friendly craft products. The product offered is called Jejaring Wangkolabu, which is a fishing net craft by utilizing plastic waste from the oceans in Wangkolabu Village. Plastic waste in the form of plastic bottles is processed with an extruder machine into plastic filaments which are then processed by the residents of Wangkolabu Village to become nets.
“The target market for this business is sea fishermen, PUD (Mainland Public Waters) fishermen, and fish cultivators, to the general public in Indonesia with a Serviceable Available Market of 1.13 T rupiah. This business has various advantages, including implementing a blue economy through marine waste management, increasing the skills of residents through empowerment, and creating new jobs to increase the economic independence of the residents,” said Bianca.
The source of electricity from this business is environmentally friendly because it is designed to run with electricity usage of 2.5 kWh for all business processes so that it supports the use of renewable energy through the use of the PLTS system and contributes to reducing plastic waste in the oceans and protecting marine ecosystems. The Wangkolabu Network is also an effort to carry out SDGs, especially SDG points 5,7,8,12, 13, and 14.
“The total cost to start this business is IDR 5,930,407.00. Based on financial projections for the next 5 years, it is found that this business has the potential to earn revenues above IDR 180,740,220 per year with a net profit of IDR 39,023,211.86 per year, PBP (payback period) under 1 year, and NPV (net present value) positive. This indicates that the business we run can generate profits quickly,” said Dr. Eng. Arnas Lubis, S.T., M.T.
Dean of FTUI, Prof. Dr. Heri Hermansyah, ST., M.Eng., IPU expressed his appreciation for Jejaring Wangkolabu’s handicraft products, “Jejaring Wangkolabu’s handicraft products can be an alternative to dealing with the problem of plastic waste and opening jobs for the surrounding community. The goals of this product are very much in line with the goals of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A good step in providing benefits to others through ideas and products initiated by superior and impactful FTUI students.”
The Accelerating Clean Energy ACCESS to Reduce Inequality (ACCESS) Project Competition is a collaboration between the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (Indonesia), the Ministry of State Administration (Timor-Leste) implemented by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and funded by the Korea International Cooperation Agency ( KOICA).
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Bureau of Public Communications
Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Indonesia