This is Nourine El-Hawary, an architect and interior designer in Alexandria (Egypt) and founder of Neobloq. Nourine started working on Neobloq right before Covid-19 and after a period she joined GIMED. After being selected by Alexandria Business Association, she has been mentored by the project and with each step she made, she was able to feed her project with more solutions and made it more green and innovative.

In a nutshell, Neobloq is a green solution to dispose of single-use plastics to serve the construction industry. This start-up is the result of recycling single-use plastics into building blocks that are an affordable and green alternative to conventional materials. It envisions a new and greener type of architecture that is reversible, transformable, and adaptable without the negative environmental impact of materials manufacturing or building demolition.

The blocks are indeed designed to be quickly assembled on-site, then dissembled at the end of their life-cycle. The impact they will have is a lower plastic waste that harms biodiversity and causes pollution. Also, the construction industry will have a lower negative environmental impact thanks to a cleaner manufacturing process and a practical product that can create innovative and flexible designs, with reduced harm to the environment.

Nourine was happy to share her experience and to tell more about GIMED’s project. She has said that GIMED prepares entrepreneurs very well to be competent start-up owners and to develop a business to be greener and more innovative. “We had extensive sessions on how to present our idea and address different types of stakeholders with what we have for them or what we need from them”, she indicated. “This experience has been very rewarding and constructive”, she added.

Neobloq started during Covid-19 and that was a difficult time for any start-up. She expected her progress to be very limited but the program encouraged her to develop a solid Business Model Canvas that unlocked so many ideas and new means to constantly take her vision to the next step. In other words, when she started she had a premature vision of a construction product that still needed to be developed in terms of design and use. Thanks to the program, not only did they develop the product to be greener for the community and innovative for the construction industry, but their brainstorming sessions helped them develop various ways of manufacturing it and promoting it.

“It will be a long process until we have our product up in the market as a viable green and construction product, but finding and being able to address these stakeholders, thanks to the immaculate work by GIMED, facilitates it”, adds Nourine.