First Graphene (ASX:FGR) Non-Executive Chairman, Warwick Grigor unveils details of its mining equipment results, what it means for FGR, next steps and outlook.
Jessica Amir: Thanks for tuning into the Finance News Network, I’m Jessica Amir. Today First Graphene Limited
(ASX:FGR) Non-Exec Chairman, Warwick Grigor is on the line. Hi Warwick and welcome back.
Warwick Grigor: Thank you Jessica.
Jessica Amir: First up Warwick, you’ve just announced results from a mining equipment test. Just tell us all about it?
Warwick Grigor: Today we’ve announced that the mining equipment, that we’re testing with polymer liners is proving very effective, even more effective than we thought it would be. They’re putting our PureGRAPH product into the polymer; it strengthens the high performance liners by 37 per cent. And they improve abrasion resistance by between 100 and 500 per cent. So that’s very significant and it promises to really open up a strong vertical, in the mining sector and areas where you need this sort of polymer.
Jessica Amir: What does this mean for the company?
Warwick Grigor: It means that we’ve done the test work; we’ve done initial trials. We are actually selling it, the product, to mining companies or using it in the field. For confidentiality reasons we can’t us their names, but we can say that they’re very significant iron ore producers, up in the Pilbara. So this is not a simple test in a laboratory, it’s not scientists messing around; this is preparatory to significant commercial sales.
Jessica Amir: And what about the next steps, what are they?
Warwick Grigor: Next steps really to scale up from here, we will have more extended timeframe actually on the mining equipment. And it’s only a matter of months before we know, just in real operational circumstances, just how good it really is. If you go by performance according to what our tests show, then during the course of 2019, we will start to be selling tonnes of graphene to the manufactures of this polymer. Not grams or kilograms, but we’ll be selling tonnes and that will make us, if not the largest, one of the largest suppliers of graphene to the market for real industrial purposes.
I think that our shareholders need to understand that if putting it into products like this, it opens the door. And once you start to get one or two companies using it, it’s going to be a wave of customers coming on saying - we want this too, this is the best, we want the efficiency this provides. So it opens the floodgates to quite significant sales of graphene, as we progress through 2019.
Jessica Amir: Lastly Warwick. Is there anything that we’ve missed today?
Warwick Grigor: Yes I’d like to emphasise our production capacity. We can do 100 tonnes per annum of graphene, which is more than anyone else in the marketplace today. Not only can we produce the volumes, we can produce quality and repeatability of quality. Those elements are required to be seen as a reliable supply to industry. It is the ability to do that, that is now opening up the doors on a number of verticals in a number of products, which is going to lead to a strong growth in sales, as we progress through 2019.
Jessica Amir: Warwick Grigor, thank you so much for the update.
Warwick Grigor: You’re welcome Jessica.
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