Here's the report from ALMI's partner, NanoDynamics...
Well I met with Keith Blakely, CEO of NanoDynamics for about 30-40 minutes in his office. As I arrived, their "office" was just outside of downtown Buffalo. The building looked terrible on the outside; it looked something like an old abandoned warehouse that you would see in a movie or something... definitely not what I expected. Once I found the door to get inside, I found it nice, but had difficulty figuring out what to do since their was no receptionist. The big news at NanoDynamics yesterday was that the governor was there thanking ND for announcing that they were creating 325 new jobs in Buffalo. It was all over the newspapers and everything.
We talked about the relationship with ALMI and how they plan on using ALMI's clay. One thing that I noticed that I hadn't known before was that when they signed the strategic relationship, NanoDynamics received warrants for 1 Million shares of ALMI stock. Jacobson had asked Keith to be an investor in ALMI, but Keith refused saying he was not interested in becoming a venture capital firm.
Another VERY interesting thing I found out, and something I bet that NO ONE here knows is that NanoDynamics kind of "brokered" the sale of clay to Natural Nano. Keith and ND set up the whole deal. Also, I found out that ND's role is more of a sales and marketing role for the clay than using the clay for personal consumption. They do have some clay (I believe that the 500 tons that they ordered are for private consumption) but I think that the other 4500 tons will be used more for brokering more deals, not for internal use. He was very satisfied with their position with the 5,000 ton deal because as he said "there is no downside." It is not a take-or-pay contract, so if they don't want the other 4500 tons they don't have to pay for another 4500 tons.
He explained to me some of the uses of the clay and showed me some PVC pipe that was reinforced with clay. I couldn't tell any diffence in it so I had to take his word for it. We also talked about the potential markets for halloysite clay and he said that there are probably a half dozen 9-digit markets ($100,000,000+) markets that ALMI could take part in and possibly get anywhere from a couple to 10 percentage points of market share. We also talked about Southern Clay (something that I've never heard of on here) and how their clay platelets are selling between $2,000-$4,000 per ton to the automotive industry. I also asked him how big the market for this clay is (meaning, could we really ever use all of the clay in the mine for nano applications); he listed many applications and gave me specific amounts of clay that could possibly be used for each of them.
We also talked about NanoDynamics itself. They are planning on going public on the NASDAQ within the next 12 months. We talked for a while about the golf ball and what the plans for that are. They plan to sell it only on the internet for $7-8 PER BALL. (The Japanese have said that they don't even want it if it costs less than $5 each) They will have write-ups in Golf Magazine/Golf Digest it will appear on the Golf Channel and on golf websites. They will probably not do any infomercials as Keith thinks it will hurt the image of the ball. They will then let the ball get so popular that the pros will come to ND and ask to play the ball and that way ND can sign players to contracts under their terms instead of wasting millions on players contracts. They also plan for someone (Nike, Titleist, etc.) to buy the technology and use it in their own balls.
We talked about some other things as well, but they aren't really relevant. I asked if he could show me around the building, but he told me that he could not because of privacy/legal issues (or somehting like that). Overall it was an interesting meeting. Keith is going to mail me a media guide.
I was kind of dissappointed because they are not as big on ALMI as I thought they were. You can even see on their website that one of their business divisions is to help market nano for those who can't do it themselves. This is where I believe ALMI fits in, unfortunately. Hopefully, if I ever get to meet with Natural Nano I can find something more interesting.
