I agree, Kim did give a "theoretical" possibility of having metric tons by January and a "conservative" estimate being "mid-year". This compounded with the fact that they more than doubled their production efficiency (from 30% to 70%) since he made that estimate would least most people to assume that it would be closer to the January date.
This did and has not happened yet (or at least it has not been publicly released that it has). I don’t believe that Kim is a liar. Sure his lawyer training shows up in his PRs with his vague and leading statements, but there is no reason that he would have given a rough timeframe that he made up himself if he did not think that he would make it.
Knowing this, you have to look at things that have happened since this estimate was made that could have prevented it from happening as predicted. There are 2 things that I can think of that could have happened:
1. Warwick found that some of the MonsterSilk strains were unusable, so Kim had to stop production from those silkworms, cutting their manufacturing significantly.
2. Kim did not know the difference between Reeled Silk and Spun Silk and treated them both the same. I think this is more likely because at one point, they had to send the silk to a silk spinning expert who then "reprocessed" the silk. I think all the expert did was separate the higher quality "reeled" silk from the lower quality "spun" silk. Since Kim seems to be trying to get as much quality out of his silk as possible to make the greatest impact to the initial market, I bet he is throwing out the spun silk and only using the reeled silk.
There may be other factors about the silk that the expert found that I am not aware of as I have only recently started researching the different silk varieties and how it is processed. I am willing to bet it basically rendered a portion of the silk unusable that was previously thought useable.
