NevHouse is the recycled housing startup representing Australia on a global stage for the Pitch@Palace finals in London

Gold Coast-based startup NevHouse has been named among three winners at the Pitch@Palace Australia competition finals, and will now be heading to London to pitch its recycled disaster-relief housing solutions on a global stage.

NevHouse was born from a plastics recycling plant that founder Nev Hyman invested in in 2004, but it wasn’t until a fateful conversation with a friend in Indonesia that NevHouse’s sustainable, recycled disaster-relief offerings were born.

“I was in Indonesia sitting with a friend and he showed me a floor plan of a house the Balinese government was giving 2000 families. I just looked at it and thought, ‘I can make that out of recycled plastic, and it would be far more appealing’,” Hyman tells StartupSmart.

Hyman founded NevHouse in 2012, and since then the startup has raised $7 million in funding from Hyman, its directors and 120 shareholders, and delivered 15 disaster-relief shelters in Vanuatu last year.

“We firmly believe we have a solution for post-disaster relief, homelessness, and housing in developing countries that’s modular, permanent and made out of recycled materials. We know we can deliver this at volume but we need big picture thinkers and people with capital to make this happen,” Hyman says. Read more

Angela Castles - Smart Company - 2 Oct 2017