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Thursday, December 14, 2023 10:54:56 AM
More information about the photo appears on the news wires.
Globenewswire has the photo from the PR along with the caption "Presentation of spider silk from Prodigy Textiles to Jon Rice and Kim Thompson of Kraig Labs."
I'm certain there are people on this board who can provide a far better estimate of the weight of the silk than I can. My best guess is 40 to 60 kilos. Here is a photo of a 10 kilo hank of silk:
.
I might have called it closer to 100 kilos, but that's a lot of weight for Thompson to be shouldering, even with the assistance of another person.
Several things of note here. First, the PR describes this as raw finished silk. KBLB sent equipment to Prodigy (as I recall) to finish the silk. I don't know whether or not finishing is done on cocoons or reeled silk. (Once again, people who know more than I do are welcome to correct me or provide further clarification.) 50 kilos of silk requires 275,000 cocoons. From the videos of Prodigy, that would have been a several-month effort.
Speculating, I believe that this silk was produced at GSS and sent to Prodigy for finishing. Not sure where it was reeled. We do know, for certain, that production was re-started some time this past year in Vietnam. My previous guesses that production had been halted in Vietnam were wrong.. At the very least, if they were halted, they were re-started some time during the year.
More speculation: the cocoons used to produce this bundle of silk were created at least a month ago. That is: it took a month to finish, reel, and gather the silk shown in this photo. Could it have been two weeks? If so, they were a very busy two weeks.
More speculation: this silk was produced from the dual-hybrid line sent to Vietnam in January. KBLB never reported any additional shipments of silk to Vietnam after the January shipment. Perhaps Prodigy or GSS worked to increase the breeding pool of the dual-line hybrids, having to toss out some of the low-quality or non-viable silkworms, but finally ending up with a solid production batch.
I'm calling this significant good news for investors. As always, I have far more questions than KBLB is willing to answer, but this is a respectable production of silk. Clearly KBLB is signaling to everyone that they want to try a different production model with their field trials, but here is evidence of production on a quasi-commercial scale.
Globenewswire has the photo from the PR along with the caption "Presentation of spider silk from Prodigy Textiles to Jon Rice and Kim Thompson of Kraig Labs."
I'm certain there are people on this board who can provide a far better estimate of the weight of the silk than I can. My best guess is 40 to 60 kilos. Here is a photo of a 10 kilo hank of silk:
. I might have called it closer to 100 kilos, but that's a lot of weight for Thompson to be shouldering, even with the assistance of another person.
Several things of note here. First, the PR describes this as raw finished silk. KBLB sent equipment to Prodigy (as I recall) to finish the silk. I don't know whether or not finishing is done on cocoons or reeled silk. (Once again, people who know more than I do are welcome to correct me or provide further clarification.) 50 kilos of silk requires 275,000 cocoons. From the videos of Prodigy, that would have been a several-month effort.
Speculating, I believe that this silk was produced at GSS and sent to Prodigy for finishing. Not sure where it was reeled. We do know, for certain, that production was re-started some time this past year in Vietnam. My previous guesses that production had been halted in Vietnam were wrong.. At the very least, if they were halted, they were re-started some time during the year.
More speculation: the cocoons used to produce this bundle of silk were created at least a month ago. That is: it took a month to finish, reel, and gather the silk shown in this photo. Could it have been two weeks? If so, they were a very busy two weeks.
More speculation: this silk was produced from the dual-hybrid line sent to Vietnam in January. KBLB never reported any additional shipments of silk to Vietnam after the January shipment. Perhaps Prodigy or GSS worked to increase the breeding pool of the dual-line hybrids, having to toss out some of the low-quality or non-viable silkworms, but finally ending up with a solid production batch.
I'm calling this significant good news for investors. As always, I have far more questions than KBLB is willing to answer, but this is a respectable production of silk. Clearly KBLB is signaling to everyone that they want to try a different production model with their field trials, but here is evidence of production on a quasi-commercial scale.
