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Nano One Materials - Interview mit CEO Dan Blondal
Dan Blondal, CEO von Nano One, erläuterte den Schwerpunkt des Unternehmens auf der Verbesserung von Kathodenmaterialien für Lithium-Ionen-Batterien, insbesondere Lithium-Eisenphosphat (LFP). Das firmeneigene „One Pot“-Verfahren von Nano One kombiniert die Schritte der Vorstufe und des Lithiums, wodurch Kosten, Komplexität und Umweltbelastung reduziert werden. Bei diesem Verfahren fallen keine Abwässer an, was einen erheblichen Vorteil gegenüber den in China verwendeten traditionellen Methoden darstellt. Nano One verfügt über Anlagen in Vancouver und Montreal und hat in der Vergangenheit bereits LFP in Quebec hergestellt. Das Unternehmen hat sich eine nicht verwässernde Finanzierung durch das US-Verteidigungsministerium und kanadische Quellen sowie Partnerschaften mit Rio Tinto, Sumitomo und Worley gesichert. Nano One ist bestrebt, sich von der chinesischen Lieferkette abzukoppeln und den regionalen Bedarf zu decken.
Über Nano One Materials
Nano One Materials Corp. (Nano One) ist ein Cleantech-Unternehmen mit einem patentieren, kohlenstoffarmen Verfahren zur Herstellung von kostengünstigen, leistungsstarken Lithium-Ionen-Batteriekathodenmaterialien. Es verfügt über strategische Kooperationen und Partnerschaften, unter anderem mit Automobilherstellern und strategischen Zulieferern wie Sumitomo Metal Mining, BASF, Umicore und Rio Tinto. Die Technologie von Nano One ist anwendbar für Elektrofahrzeuge, Energiespeicher, und Unterhaltungselektronik, um Kosten und Kohlenstoffintensität zu senken und gleichzeitig die Umweltverträglichkeit zu verbessern.
Nano One will seine Technologie als schlüsselfertige Produktionslösungen für Lizenz-, Joint-Venture- und unabhängige Produktionsmöglichkeiten im Pilotversuch erproben und demonstrieren und setzt dabei kanadische Experten, wichtige Mineralien, erneuerbare Energien und ein florierendes Ökosystem mit Zugang zu großen aufstrebenden Märkten in Nordamerika, Europa und dem indopazifischen Raum ein. Nano One hat zudem Fördermittel von Sustainable Development Technology Canada und der kanadischen Regierung sowie der Regierung von British Columbia erhalten.
Weitere Informationen finden Sie unter www.nanoone.ca.
Firmenkontakt:
Paul Guedes
E-Mail: info@nanoone.ca
Tel.: +1 (604) 420-2041
So I'm very pleased to have a very special guest on the show today. It's the first time we have Dan Blondal from the exciting company Nano One Materials. We have talked about Nano One already, and now it's time to have the CEO on the show. So welcome Dan.
Dan Blondal:Thank you, Marcus, it's great to be here.
AktienTalk:Dan, can you please tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and how you started Nano One?
Dan Blondal:I'm a Canadian. I live in Canada on the west coast in just in Vancouver, and I'm an engineer by background, and it studied here in British Columbia, and have worked in a variety of different sectors through my through my working career actually started in funny. I've started in mining, although it was in materials handling, some walk around. But, you know, I went through a
AktienTalk:Can you tell us about Nano One at high level, and we can go into deeper details further in the interview?
Dan Blondal:Yes. So Nano One is a technology company, and we're focused on, on on process technology to improve the way that cathode materials are made for lithium ion batteries. And a cathode material, I think, as your listeners might know, is is a is a composite of lithium nickel manganese cobalt or lithium iron and phosphorus and and other materials. And there's a whole range of
AktienTalk:Not at all! But I have to ask, as a guy who was a little bit lazy in physics in school, why is it important for the battery to have a cathode?
Dan Blondal:Oh, yeah, great question. So the cathode, so you have to have two electrodes in the battery. And when you when you battery is, of course, just moving electrons through wires back and forth, and it has to be able to take the charge and deliver the charge. And the way a lithium ion battery works is the the cathode itself is a is a structure of metals. Let's in the case of iron
AktienTalk:And how is Nano One finally improving on the cathode?
Dan Blondal:So at the end of the day, our improvement on the cathode is in the processing. So we're not changing fundamentally the cathode, lithium iron phosphate is lithium iron phosphate. No matter how you make it, it has to be a certain crystal structure. It has to have a certain lithium content. We're improving the way you make we make it. And so ultimately, that will you know, as I say, drive
AktienTalk:And how does this differ right now from the other technologies or processes that are available in the market.
Dan Blondal:Yeah, I started on a little bit earlier. So the way cathodes are made today, and I'll walk you through the lithium iron phosphate cathode, because it's kind of quite interesting. So pretty much all of the world's LFP is made in China, and it starts with in China, it starts with iron sulfate, which is a byproduct, or tailings from titanium oxide refining and mining. So titanium the furnace stage, these these powders are put into ceramic boats or trays, and they're pushed through a big, long furnace. It's called a roller hearth kiln, but it's like a big pizza oven in the sense that it's on, it's on a conveyor, ceramic conveyor, and these boats of of material float through the the furnace and it cooked for a period of maybe 24 hours. They have to heat up from room
AktienTalk:Sustainability is one of the words that is going around right now. And can you expand on the sustainability of this one pot process you mentioned also on your website.
Dan Blondal:Yes. So the one part process. So what we do differently than than that long, complicated thing I just explained is that we we go direct. We can go direct from iron metal powders in the form of oxides, which would might be used in pigments or or or metal. Like iron powder, and we completely bypass the need to go through that intermediate sulfate and that that eliminates all the need
AktienTalk:yeah, but I can imagine that you are still challenging, great hurdles regarding the permitting situation.
Dan Blondal:Well, so that's the, actually, the interesting thing about permitting, because, because we don't have any wastewater, we don't have any special permitting issues. So the the conventional process used in China, while it has very low cost source of iron, and actually most of the permitting and the and the cost of treating that material is, is discount, fully discounted in China. If you
AktienTalk:You know that Germany is one of the biggest countries regarding the automobile sector, and right now we have a big crisis here regarding the EVS. And I'm asking myself, does this one part process addresses also the EV needs and other markets that that are really critical here, for example, in Europe,
Dan Blondal:yes. So you need cathode materials in EV batteries and energy storage batteries, and every any kind of lithium ion battery needs it. The one pot process is flexible enough to make virtually all cathode materials. We believe that lithium iron phosphate is going to play a major role in the electric vehicle market, specifically in the at the entry level. And that's because an you know, data houses, all of these things. They're all, they all need batteries and LP, LFP will play a very major role there, because industrially, it's a much longer lasting material than the than the nickel based materials. So again, there's a ton of market opportunity here, going from, you know, quite small batteries to very, very large batteries.
AktienTalk:Are you familiar with the company, Northvolt?
Dan Blondal:Oh, yes, I am.
AktienTalk:so you heard about the bankruptcy thing, right? And Northvolt is building a facility in North Germany. And right now people are really scared about that. Does this affect your business as well?
Dan Blondal:Well, Northvolt is at this point, focused on the nickel based business. So Nick nickel based batteries, so we're protected from that, but, but I think, look north volts failure will have a will have an effect on the whole market. It's a very, very big bet and and as they stumble with on executing their projects, it will have a dampening effect on, really, on the, on the whole market,
AktienTalk:I think this is important to know for our subscribers and our listeners. So, Dan, can you give us your assessment of the overall EV market, and I guess the electrification transition in general? At the moment, lots of uncertainty is, it seems a face value, but good long term growth. How is Europe, North America and other markets navigating this?
Dan Blondal:Yes, so, yeah, yeah. You know what? It's very complicated. Look, the world made a whole bunch of really big promises three, four or five years ago. You know where we'd be in 2025, and I think those aspirations and hopes have come down to earth, and that's the, you know, coupled with with high interest rates, that's made, that's made investment, access to capital challenging. It's that's where we're that's where we believe we bring a very. A long term, very strategic solution to the to the market.
AktienTalk:Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have facilities in Vancouver and Montreal right now.
Dan Blondal:ThIs is correct! We are on both ends of Canada and and I'll explain that. So Burnaby is where we vancou, just outside of Vancouver. It's the district is called Burnaby, but that's where we traditionally done all of our R and D work. And facility in Quebec is where we're doing the commercialization work. It's important to understand a minute the history in Quebec, though, that's if
AktienTalk:absolutely, absolutely yes.
Dan Blondal:So that facility had been operational for the last dozen years, and it goes back even further than that. LFP was was actually invented in the University of Texas by a fellow named John, good enough, but it was first commercialized in Quebec, Hydro Quebec and the University of Montreal. They, they figured out that you needed to carbon coat LFP to make it work. And the first, and they recommissioned it with the one pot process to prove, prove it out. And we have, so we have an experienced team. We have an existing asset, and, and, and, and really an operation that has a very good reputation around the world because it was producing, you know, LP for for a dozen years before we even walked in there. So that's what we have in Montreal, just outside of Montreal, I wanted to walk
AktienTalk:Dan, what people really love about your company is that you have been really successful in attracting non dilutive support, right? Can you explain on that a little bit?
Dan Blondal:Yeah. I mean, historically, we've, we've had a lot of government support, as we have taken our company, you know, through development, into the piloting phase. And to the tune of almost 25 million Canadian over the last 10 years. And then we just, we just pulled in two bits of financing, non dilutive financing. The big one was from the US Department of Defense for just. Under 13
AktienTalk:At the same time, you have some very impressive investors in 901. Right. So let's talk about Rio Tinto and Sumitomo. Can you explain how you're working together with these companies?
Dan Blondal:So, Rio Tinto and Sumitomo both really came into the Nano one. They each own about 5% of our capital stack. And they came into the company really for the same reasons, for lithium iron phosphate and because we eliminate these, the wastewater challenges we you know, we present a solution that can be scaled up in jurisdictions outside of China. And that's that's super important. So
AktienTalk:We have to mention another really interesting partnership you announced recently, that is Worley. Can you expand on that relationship and partnership?
Dan Blondal:Yeah, well, Worley are very large Australian engineering company. Many people remember them by an older name, Worley, Parsons. Worley are 50,000 people worldwide, and they, you know, we, they came to nano one again for the same reason, because we eliminate the wastewater in the LFP process, we can collaboratively design a plant and a process design package to go around our IP that their supply chain. So that's a again, that's a bit of a long story, but that is how Worley and nano one came together as well.
AktienTalk:But the big names doesn't stop here. So you have also agreement with Volkswagen, BSF, yumikor, et cetera, et cetera. And can you tell us why are these companies working with Nano one?
Dan Blondal:Yeah, so BSF and yumicorps, we are the the arrangements to them are a little bit different, but we're basically co developing the one pop process to make their custom materials. So by and large, BSF and human core are focused on nickel based materials, and we have a joint development agreement to customize our process to make their specific blend of nickel manganese and cobalt based
AktienTalk:At the end, we also have to talk about, how is Nano One going to make money and create shareholder value? So what can you tell us about that?
Dan Blondal:Well, from a revenue model point of view, we really have two fundamental sources of future revenue. One is from that existing plant in Quebec. So that plant, we can scale it, and that's what the DoD money right now is there to kind of get it back to nameplate with the one process. So we get it up to 1000 or 2000 tons, a portion of that production will be sold for sold as battery
AktienTalk:What can investors look forward to in 2025?
Dan Blondal:Well, we're going to continue to work with Worley, and I think as we, as we learn more about the about the strategic interests in in licensing, we'll be able to bring as much of that information as we can under. You know, of course, a lot of it's under NDA, and we're always restricted by that, but we we will be bringing, you know, more and more information out about the about the
AktienTalk:At the end of each show, I'm asking my guest to tell me the three main reasons why people should put Nano, one, for example, in this case, on the watch list. So I'm asking you the same,
Dan Blondal:Look, we are one of the only kind of pure plays in the space that can decouple from China so address many of the needs that that need to be addressed in North America and Europe. So it's something to watch the fact that we have, we have an experienced track record and history in in Canada and in selling manufacturing and selling materials into Europe and and North America. That's
AktienTalk:I agree. Thank you for being my guest today. It was absolutely a pleasure for me, and I hope that we can continue our conversation sometime in the future.
Dan Blondal:Thank you, Marcus, it's a pleasure being here. Great to know you. Thanks!