Applied Graphene Materials has entered into a joint development agreement with German lubricants and oils business Puralube Germany (which will be shortly changing its name to Puraglobe).
Graphene Nanochem reported their financial results for the first half of 2015. Revenues were £7 million (down from £20.4 million in H1 2014) and the loss before tax was £3.7 million (a £200,000 greater loss compared to H1 2014).
NanoChem says that they anticipated the decline in revenues "in line with the overall rationalization of the business to a suite of higher margin products and offerings". Following the collapse in oil prices, Nanochem exited the capital intensive low margin fuel additives business.
Graphene Nanochem reported their financial revenues for 2014, with revenues of £48.3 million - up 53% from 2013, mostly due to contracted sales to Shell and Chevron.
Operating loss for 2014 was £6.8 million (down from £10.1 million), but the company reports a gross profit of £1.6 million - despite a feedstock price anomaly for the year. Delays in the roll out of graphene-based products are to be blame for the operating loss.
IBM researchers designed a method to estimate and measure friction in various materials. The method allows the scientists to mechanically measure the tension and friction of two sliding sheets of graphite, something that has been previously poorly understood and theory-based. The team also derived a mathematical expression to illustrate what they were seeing in an atomic force microscope (AFM), which turned out to be in agreement with theoretical models.
The scientists discovered that the friction is randomly determined in nature and directly based on the interaction between the proportionate lattices of the material, in this case graphite. A conversation with one of the researchers revealed that since the study focused on the facial aspects of the graphite, it is his belief that it would also apply for graphene, but this will require further inquiry.
Recent news from NanoXplore successful $2.7M financing round, launch of their three tonnes/year production facility have positioned the company as a leading graphene company, and certainly a major player in North America.
The core of the company appears to be their production process, developed in-house. In addition to large capacity, they claim it creates very high quality (low defect) graphene, functionalized during production to facilitate mixing (dispersion) with a broad range of industrial materials. The range of products shows not only high quality graphene powders, but also a couple of unique offerings. Interestingly, they seem open to licensing their production technology.
Canada-based Group NanoXplore announced that it finalized an agreement for a non-brokered private placement financing totaling $2.725M CDN ($2.18 million USD) in December, 2014. The investors are several Canadian individuals with strong backgrounds in chemical and industrial markets and successful records of building successful technology enterprises.
The graphene producer and application developers hopes that these new investors will provide more than just funds - also knowledge and connection in target markets. NanoXplore aims to use the money to accelerate their customer acquisition and sales efforts. The company has seen a strong interest in their products over the last year, especially for applications in smart textiles and Li-ion batteries, as well as lubricants, paints, and polymers.
One promising graphene application is in the lubricants market. Graphene NanoChem for example is commercializing graphene-based lubricants for the oil industry (and already signed a deal to supply 135,000 tons of these materials in the next five years). Now researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory discovered that those graphene-based lubricants last longer than conventional lubricants (made from graphite or molybdenum disulfide).
A single layer of graphene, for example, lasts for over 6,500 "wear cycles". This is a great improvement compared to conventional lubricants that will last for only 1,000 wear cycles - and this will only happen if you use about 1,000 layers of those materials.
Bloomberg posted an interesting article on Applied Graphene Materials, the graphene maker that was established in 2010 as a spin-off from Durham University to develop a new CVD-based graphene synthesis method and produce graphene materials. The company's CEO, Jon MabbitT, details some interesting new applications they are trying to develop.
AGM is currently targeting two types of applications. First up are early-adopters, such as Formula 1 teams. But AGM is also looking to enter into long-term products - mainly in the aerospace industry. Graphene can enable stronger and lighter materials, suitable for aircraft. AGM is also working with Dyson (vacuum cleaner developer), Procter & Gamble, lubricants makers and wind-turbine developers. Finally, they are developing an impermeable rustproof coatings for ships.
Graphene Nanochem announced that it received the first two commercial orders for its high-value graphene-enhanced PlatQuartZ oilfield material. The first order is a small one (380 drums), while the second is six times larger (2,640 drums) and valued at $5.6 million.
NanoChem also announced that it facing new delays on their graphene-enhanced PlatDrill drilling fluid - due to regulatory and testing constraints. This means that the company is likely to miss market expectations for 2015 (in fact results for 2015 are lkeyl to be "significantly" below current market expectations).
In November 2013, Graphene Nanochem signed an agreement with Malaysia's Scomi Oiltools, a global supplier of drilling fluid services, to exclusively market a range of formulated graphene-enhanced PlatDrill series to the oilfield chemicals market.
Now Graphene Nanochem signed a licensing and offtake agreement for the entire production of PlatDrill under the Scomi-Platinum joint venture. The two companies will build a 45,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) production facility: 30,000 tpa of Platdrill material and 15,000 of specialty chemicals. The fab will also produce graphene nanomaterial (will increase NanoChem's capacity from 30 tonnes per year to 50). Scomi Oiltools agreed to buy the whole production of PlatDrill over five years (estimated at 135,000 tonnes) with an option to renew for another 5 years.
