Investing in public graphene stocks - Page 19

Nationwide Engineering Research and Development (NERD) has raised £8 million (over USD$9.5 million) in seed funding as it looks to commercialize a graphene-enhanced building material called Concretene. The funding came from the venture capital firm LocalGlobe.

NERD, a company founded by Nationwide Engineering Group, developed Concretene with the goal of creating a stronger and more sustainable product than traditional concrete by adding a graphene formulation into the hydration process of concrete development. NERD said that when deployed on active construction projects, Concretene was as much as 30-50% stronger than standard concrete.

Malaysia-based graphite and single-layer graphene producer, Graphjet Technology (GTI), recently signed a Letter of Offer to build its RM400 million (over USD$90 million) production facility in the Phase 3 of Malaysia-China Kuantan Industrial Park.

Graphjet's patented technology aims to transform palm kernel shell, a waste from palm kernel production, into single-layer graphene, at a significantly lower cost than the current production of single-layer graphene. The production plant is expected to produce 10,000 tonnes of graphite and 60 tonnes of single-layer graphene annually. 

Last month, Applied Graphene Materials (AGM) reported a failed attempt to raise funds, which caused  AGM shares to plunge. Now, Applied Graphene Materials said it received non-binding indicative proposals for its sale or the sale of its main operating subsidiary.

The graphene materials maker said it is in discussions with the parties involved and expects final proposals in early January. After this, the board would select a preferred bidder to progress with. Applied added that there can be no certainty any final proposals will be made, nor the terms of any proposals made.

Reports suggest that Chinese startup Caiqi Xin Cailiao (Caiqi New Materials) is preparing to mass-produce graphene materials for supercapacitors, in the near future.

According to these reports, Caiqi has already completed mass production trials and a fundraising round of about 10 million yuan ($1.4 million).

First Graphene has announced it has secured grant funding, in conjunction with the University of Manchester (UoM), for the next stage of research into commercializing graphene-enhanced supercapacitor materials.

Awarded through Innovate UK’s “Accelerated Knowledge Transfer to Innovate” scheme (AKT2I),
the grant will be used to fund a project intended to accelerate development and optimization of a
graphene-metal-oxide slurry for manufacturing high energy density supercapacitors.

Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) has provided an update on the ongoing investment in its Battery Development Centre (BDC), saying its board of directors has approved an additional A$600,000 (around USD$405,000) in capital expenditure to accelerate the progress of semi-automatic pouch cell prototype production for customer trials and Graphene Aluminium Ion (G+AI) Battery cell development.

GMG noted that it has also successfully increased its organizational capacity by attracting new staff experienced in pouch cell manufacturing, thereby enabling the acceleration of its battery performance optimization program.

UK-based PlanarTECH offers R&D and production-scale equipment and services for all classes of emerging 2D materials and carbon-based materials such as CNTs and CVD diamonds. In 2020 planarTECH launched a successful equity crowdfunding campaign as it aims to expand its business and enter new markets such as industrial CVD graphene production systems and material production.

We have recently talked to the company's CEO, J. Patrick Frantz, who gives us the latest business and technology updates from PlanarTECH.

Q: Can you update us on your latest business activities, with a focus on graphene?

We had a very difficult time during the pandemic, as many companies did. From July 2020 through June 2021 we shipped just one CVD system. However, we started to see a resumption of customer activity towards the end of 2021 as labs reopened and people around the world got back to work. For 2022, we’re seeing a complete recovery and are on our way to the best year we’ve ever had in terms of sales.

Versarien has announced that it has raised £1.85 million (around USD$2,259,000) in new share capital.

Yesterday, Versarien provided an update on its £5 million graphene project G-SCALE (Graphene, Seat, Concrete, Arch, Leisure, Elastomer). The project aims to produce sufficient quantities of graphene to enable commercialization of graphene-enhanced products in these five priority application areas.

On 1 July 2020, Versarien announced that the UK Government, via Innovate UK, had granted a £5 million loan to the Company, for a project named G-SCALE, an acronym for Graphene, Seat, Concrete, Arch, Leisure, Elastomer. The award was to facilitate the production of sufficient quantities of graphene to enable commercialization of graphene-enhanced products in these five priority application areas.

Recently, Versarien has provided a summary of G-SCALE progress for each of the relevant segments. 

Directa Plus recently said it expects its revenue to rise in 2022 due to a growing proportion of repeat customer business. Directa Plus expects full-year revenue for 2022 to now be at least €10.0 million, up 16% from €8.6 million in 2021.

Directa Plus said it will enter 2023 with a ‘record’ order book of €8.5 million, having secured a number of new customers and contracts during the period across all key verticals and markets.