Excellent overview of the latest HPQ video @ordos My notes from the video:
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Impact Funding Europe
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Based on discussions with the funding specialists Impact Funding Europe (IFE)
- Based on success, no money paid to the funding specialists up front as opposed to Canada. Obviously they are interested, since it is success based without upfront payment
- Canada grant application for QRR took around 1.5 years (!) to get through. Lots of bureaucracy
- Another revenue stream for QRR was identified in conversations: a lot of carbon gas is a byproduct of QRR, value added synthetic fuel using hydrogen and carbon, aviation and ship fuel
- Primary revenue stream, as already known, is the production of silicon metal. Batteries are in demand, including general energy storage, which is a hot topic right now
- Discussions accelerated over the past few weeks
- IFE usual success rate is 80-90% of the time and wouldn't waste their time with something that is not high potential
- (!) Fumed silica is not included in this, because it doesn't need grant funding
Fumed Silica (no grants needed)
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- One of the NDA companies was open to new technologies and forthcoming to collaborate. They will most likely be the leaders
- EBITDA and margins between 65-80%, unheard of
- Bernard believes fumed silica will generate a lot of shareholder value in the coming 12 months
- Dealing with huge companies, who move slowly, but they are very very interested, otherwise they would just tell you to get lost
- (!) Extremely confident on the pilot plant, there are a lot of similarities with the successful scaling up of the QRR, with smaller differences. The team scaling up the QRR is working on the FSR pilot plant
Battery Material
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- Not much sense with continue focusing on cycles for the non-optimized material, hence less NR
- This is going to be just like fumed silica, there is a huge market for various applications, EVs are just part of it
- QRR is less attractive at this time (already known from past discussions), but could be reprioritized with the value added product