Humanitaria folded cardboard into an $18 relief bed that factories can make 24,000 a day

In an October 2023 Fast Company piece, Juan Sanz Molina, cofounder of Madrid startup Humanitaria, says NGOs often use camping beds that are expensive, slow to assemble and difficult or impossible to transport by air. Humanitaria's first product is a cardboard bed that looks like a flat box and becomes a bed with a few folds.

Cardboard was the cheapest rigid, lightweight material, he says, and it could cut the cost of a bed by as much as 90%, to about $18. Because packaging factories can make it, Sanz says production can respond to demand in hours rather than weeks, with as many as 24,000 beds a day, twice what camp-bed makers might produce in a month.

Tuning the design took longer than the concept: the bed had to be small enough to transport and store and strong enough to hold more than 700 pounds. Folded flat, 100 stack on a pallet. It is not designed for comfort, so NGOs would add thin mattresses, but it is sturdy enough for makeshift hospitals.

Existing humanitarian beds were costly and awkward to move by air.

Packaging factories offer low production costs and fast production speeds.

Flat folding saves space in logistics centres and lets beds fit on a plane.

Choose the material and manufacturer whose existing capacity already matches your volume and speed needs, instead of building a bespoke supply chain.

The article gives no deployment or sales results; the cost and capacity figures are the founder's. It says the bed is the startup's first product.