The Graphene, Graphite and Carbon Nanotube Research Board

[woodpeckers]

Summary for those interested in Versarien:

Versarien PLC is the first graphene company in the world to successfully complete the US based Graphene Council's "Verified Graphene Producer” programme.

Versarien produces, develops and commercialises advanced materials technology with graphene (brand name: Nanene), graphene electrically conductive ink (brand name: Graphinks) and boron nitride (brand name: Hexotene) currently core products. There are however, many further materials being researched by the company which could have equally have amazing qualities.

It is a British Company and listed on the London AIM market under the ticker VRS.

Link to the website: http://www.versarien.com/

Discovered in 2004 at the University of Manchester, graphene is a single layer of graphite arranged in a hexagonal lattice. At 200x stronger than steel it is the strongest known material, yet it's also stretchy. It is better at carrying electricity and heat than any other material, better by far than silver and copper. It is optically transparent, yet so dense that it is impermeable to gases so even helium, the smallest gas atom, cannot pass through it.

Graphene can create multiple benefits in multiple industries. Here are a few examples based on proven applications:

Construction:
Adding a small amount of graphene to cement makes concrete that is 30% stronger allowing buildings and other structures to be made using less material, increasing efficiently with lower costs and much improved environmental impact. Adding graphene to asphalt improves the wear resistance by over 200% and extends the service life of roads.

Aerospace:
Graphene enhanced composites are significantly stronger for the same mass of material. This allows ‘Lightweighting’ meaning less material is needed allowing greater fuel economy and greater range.

Automotive:
Graphene can drastically reduce the weight of vehicles allowing better fuel efficiency while graphene paint provides an ultra-strong coating which is impermeable to gas, water and chemicals, meaning rust could be a thing of the past. Graphene can be used in battery technology to enhance efficiency allowing electric vehicles greater range and faster charging.
Packaging:
It has several properties that lend themselves well to food packaging by acting as a barrier to oxygen and moisture therefore increasing the life of the product, and features both conductivity for antistatic packaging and stiffness for added strength achieving the same mechanical performance using less plastic, and is recyclable.

This is just a very small fraction of the uses for graphene advanced materials that you can use right now.
The pace of change in this emerging industry is astonishing. Whole industries of the future are being based around the use of graphene and these will play a key role in generating economic benefits to those that embrace this exciting advanced materials approach.

Competition:
2D graphene material must be less than 11 layers thick, and anything above is bulk material (graphite). It is very difficult to produce high quality graphene cost effectively at commercial scale, which is why there are many companies which claim to produce graphene, but 95% of them produce multi-layer graphene nano platelets, which is relatively easy to do.

The range of gains from graphene declines rapidly when you move above 10 layers, which is why we are delighted that the ISO standards have just been published. Many of the so called graphene producers will no longer be able to call their product graphene.

Versarien is the first graphene company in the world to successfully complete the US based Graphene Council's "Verified Graphene Producer" programme which provides end-users with a degree of confidence that has not existed before, that they are sourcing material from a reputable supplier capable of producing genuine graphene cost effectively at a commercial scale.

?Many of the companies currently claiming to be producers have serious financial problems. Versarien is 'lucky' to have many arms to the company, including 'traditional' profit making companies which have supported 2DTech through its infancy.

Versarien’s financials:
Review based on Announced Interim Results•
Cash of £6.07 million at 30 September 2018 (30 September 2017: £0.35 million) following? successful fund raising of £5.15 million gross in September 2018•
In October 2018, Versarien completed its acquisition of 62% of the Spanish company Gnanomat?S.L. for £2,647,000 of which £673,000 in cash and £1,974,000 in shares. In addition VRS willprovide a convertible loan to GNA of €750,000 in September 2019 and £500,000 in March 2020.•
Cash used from operations before working capital changes was £375,000 being a monthly cash?consumption of £63,000.•
Free cash is considered to be the excess of a minimum of £1m headroom and the GNA?commitment of £1.1m so free cash at 30 September was £4m which at the H1 burn rate of?£63,000 per month provides circa 5 years operational cash before any increased opex, capex etc

Company Objectives:
VRS's chosen areas initially for developing their graphene technology are carbon fibre composites, polymers and batteries.
The CEO Neill Ricketts has stated in many interviews that he wants VRS to become a huge company. They intend to do this by:
Concentrating (though not exclusively) on 5 main existing collaborations to bring them to the stage where they are producing graphene in commercial quantities for specific applications.??
Establishing new licence arrangements with research institutions and acquiring majority stakes in companies whose intellectual property fits with their definition of advanced materials technology and are capable of commercialising graphene applications and
Continuing to identify opportunities for international expansion.

Connections:
Versarien have links with all the great UK universities including Manchester and Cambridge and now Madrid university too thanks to the Gnanomat acquisition, Versarien have a licensed process from the University of Ulster with 60% ownership of IP.
They are a Tier 1 partner of the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre
They are a project partner with the National Graphene Institute
They have 2 UK Government secondees and around 38 collaborations
They have good working relationships with The Warwick Manufacturing Group, The Energy Innovation Centre, Scafell Organics Ltd, Fern Plastics Ltd, Luxus Ltd and many more.

Then there is their range of products... Nanene, Hexotene, Graphinks and Polgrene just to get us going...many more 2D materials are being worked on as we speak. Then of course moving up the value chain we have Gnanomat and AAC Cryoma....

They currently produce Nanene enhanced earphones which are being sold by MediaDevil and are at an advanced stage of launching a range of mobile phone and tablet device accessories utilising Nanene.
https://mediadevil.com/products/artisanphonics-cb-01-nanene-graphene-wood-earphones

Validation of Versarien's products and people:
-First graphene company in the world to successfully complete the Graphene Council's "Verified Graphene Producer" programme.

-It has been independently tested by the University of Manchester and we believe it to be the highest quality graphene product on the market today.

-The patented process that is used to manufacture Nanene produces high quality graphene nano-platelets with a majority of sub 10 layers and a significant number of sub 5 layers material. This gives Nanene its incredible performance benefits. The quality of this process has been independently verified by several leading United Kingdom universities.

-They have been successful in all the tenders entered into to supply the UK Government’s Centre for Process Innovation with nanomaterials after a competitive process.

-Versarien has been appointed as the inaugural Industry Council member and Corporate Partner of The National Graphene Association ("NGA"), the main organisation and body in the US advocating and promoting the commercialisation of graphene. It was also selected to be The Graphene Council's launch client for their 'Verified Graphene Producer’ programme to independently verify that the Company's Nanene graphene nano platelets meet their demanding standards.

-The quality of their Nanene graphene nano platelets has been satisfactorily tested by the Chinese National Graphene Product Quality Supervision and Inspection Centre (NGSIC) in Wuxi and more importantly the Chinese appear to prefer their graphene over that of the many producers in China.

-Perhaps one of the greatest validations however, is that Dr Denis Koltsov and Dr Martin Kemp who worked on the ISO graphene standards then chose to go and work for the company.

So far they have had no collaborations fail due to product performance.