ASH CLOUD
ASH CLOUD
Low cost, locally produced zero emissions nitrogen fertilizer with Frere Byrne PlasmaLeap Technologies
Over the last century our food systems have become increasingly reliant on synthetic nitrogen. This nitrogen fertilizer is mostly made through the energy intensive haber-bosch process in centralized production plants, often located in politically sensitive location, that have a carbon footprint multiple times greater than the aviation industry.
Today we are joined by Frere Byrne of PlasmaLeap Technologies who is developing low cost mobile technology to systhesis zero emissions ammonia from air and water. I caught up with Frere to discuss the impact of locally produced nitrogen that is not relaint on fossil feuls and long and centralized supply chains
PlasmaLeap's modular chemical plants—called NFix—operate as single 40-foot containerized units producing industrial-grade nitrates and ammonia from air, water, and renewable electricity. These units run autonomously using algorithms, requiring no specialized operators and can be controlled remotely from company desks. For large-scale applications, units stack like batteries to create regional facilities. For smallholder farmers, Plasma Leap has developed miniature versions funded through a Gates Foundation grant, targeting production costs below the lowest commodity urea prices of the past 20-30 years.
The technology addresses identical challenges across vastly different farming contexts. Whether a one-hectare subsistence farm in sub-Saharan Africa or a 100,000-hectare cereal operation in Australia, farmers face volatile input prices, intermittent supply chains, and little control over product quality.
Welcome to the Ash Club. I'm Ash Sweeting. Over the last century, our food systems have become increasingly reliant on synthetic nitrogen. This nitrogen fertilizer is mostly made through the energy-intensive labor botch process in centralized production plants, often located in politically sensitive locations. These plants have a carbon footprint multiple times greater than the aviation industry. Today we are joined by Freer Burton of Plasma League, who is developing low-cost mobile technology to synthesize zero emissions ammonia from air and water. I caught up with Freyr to discuss the impact of locally produced nitrogen that is not reliant on fossil fuels and long and centralized supply chains. Thank you for having me. So, Plasma Leap, you recently won the first prize at the Thrive Summit in San Diego, and it's a new technology that can do quite amazing things that I'll let you explain. So that's tell tell me more about it, what it does, and where the idea came from.
Frere Byrne:Yeah, thank you. Um it was a it was a huge honor to kind of even just represent SVG um in Santa Clara and and even more so to kind of take the top spot. Um in you know the crux of it, um, you know, Plasma Leap is a is a climate tech company. Um we exist in the chemical sector, um, and we build some of the world's most advanced electricity-driven chemical reactors, uh, tackling chemical synthesis in typically high-emitting industries. So we focus mostly on agriculture, mining, and power fuel. Uh and what we build is an electricity-driven reactor that takes any input gas, um, uses electricity to break that gas down to its building blocks and allows us to make other chemicals in a really energy-efficient way. And so, what we're able to do is tackle uh production of chemicals in sectors that are typically driven by fossil fuels. Um really, really exciting space for us because it's you know, in essence, a market that hasn't been tackled yet, and allow it allows us to make zero emissions modular chemical plants that can go on everything from farms to mines to industrial sites that make chemicals, even sites that use huge amounts of fossil fuels. Um, so very, very exciting position for us to be in. We're a five-year-old company, um, originally started as a research technology business, and then over this over the course of three to four years, uh, through a huge amount of partner research, we found ourselves into a number of these high-value applications. And so, what PlasmaLeak does now is we focus on uh chemical reactors at scale that produce two groups of chemicals. So nitrogen chemicals for agriculture and mining, uh, and then hydrocarbon fuels for all kinds of heavy, uh heavy industry.
Ash Sweeting:Wow, and and this is low energy producer production of these fuels. So let's just go into the nitrogen side of things first. Um you know, when the Hyber Bosch process kind of was invented, I guess, um around the time of the First World War, um, all that nitrogen originally went into munitions for the first world war, and then these factories were built, and then after that, that nitrogen went into um nitrogen fertilizer, which basically led to the whole green revolution. It led to the farming systems that we have today that can produce enough food to feed the world's population. But that's a hugely energy intensive process, and I guess also from the geopolitical side of things, a lot frequently those those um plants are in countries with lots of oil, such as Russia and places like that. So they also give certain power um and um to to those countries over over the customers, which are you know many parts of the the global south as well as the global north. So that's a hugely important uh you know our societies rely on that nitrogen. So, where do you fit into that whole story?
Frere Byrne:Yeah, I mean it's a it's a good good point you raise. I think the the history of you know, the history of the emergence of the harbour gosh um is an interesting one relating to us because we often talk about what we do as very new and novel. Um and certainly around the turn of the 20th century, um, you know, as the world's guano markets were dying, um uh there was a very brief period where the type of technology that we use uh took off. So there's a process called the Birkland Ide process, which was also ironically run by electricity, not fossil fuels, and produced a bulk of the world's nitrogen for the ag sector in that brief window, that 15 to 20 year window before the harbor botch really took off. Um and there are really cool examples of you know this type of technology being deployed. The higher the hydroelectric facility at Niagara Falls, for example, was a massive nitric acid fertilizer facility. And so during that, you know, in that 20-year period, about 15 to 20 percent of the world's total nitrogen for agriculture came out of a very similar process to what we we produce. But as you as you kind of rightly called out, you know, the as as they often do, wars come to an end. Um and certainly the drivers behind uh you know, some of the drivers that exist behind decarbon fossil fuel industries weren't, you know, weren't as weren't the kind of uh don't didn't present the same kind of pressures that they do now, and natural gas was abundant and so so naturally the harbour bosch took off. Um the the problem the problem we have today um is that the harbour bosch, you know, uh the harbour bosch plants around the world are highly centralized, often, as you say, kind of in politically um tempestuous environments, um, but provide critical chemicals into the world into many of the world's supply chains, not just agriculture, mining, pharmaceuticals, heavy industrial chemicals. Um, but from an agricultural perspective, the you know um the ammonia that comes off those plants is responsible for feeding anywhere from between 40 and 60, 60 percent of the world's population as a critical input crop production. And there are incredible um graphs that you see from the FAO and the IFA and many different uh organizations that show just how ammonia has enabled the mass population of growth we've had over the last hundred years. But it's dirty, like it's super dirty. You know, the harbor wash is a hundred years old. Um and if you if you look at the emissions from making ammonia from the harbor wash, it you know, they're anywhere from two to three percent of global CO2, moving it's as high as 1% of CO2 from these large centralized plants, and then using it in agriculture, uh depending on the estimate, you know, and what data source you follow is anywhere as it's from four to six percent of global CO2 from emissions at the crop. And so it's a you know, they these are massive stacking emissions, often multiples of the aviation sector when you know when you kind of benchmark them. And the where we get to very quickly when we talk about this space is without green synthesis processes for ammonia and really good alternative chemicals, um the world won't hit net zero. Uh it presents uh a climate risk, you know, it in many cases uh represents a sovereignty risk around food supply. Because as you know, again, we're talking about uh a number of you know highly centralized but very tenuous trade routes from countries that are often sanctioned. Um, you know, and and ultimately it it presents a huge economic risk because the inputs are incredibly inputs are incredibly volatile and the prices that they present are incredibly volatile to the market. And so where we fit in is we present a technology that allows us to detach itself from uh you know commodity sectors like natural gas rely for input, um, and to peg the input costs to known stable inputs. So in this case, um, you know, levelized costs of electricity that come off uh wholesale renewable um assets like solar panels and wind and wind turbines, um, and then present a product into the market that can be deployed at the endpoint of consumption, so it's decentralized and not dependent on international trade routes, and ultimately is highly efficient, so ends up with you know very cheap product.
Ash Sweeting:So am I correct to understand that from that egg perspective? Firstly, you know, you said you're you you needed gas as an input and nitrogen, the the atmosphere is something like 80 odd percent nitrogen, if um if I'm correct. So there's an abundant source of nitrogen, it's just a matter of taking it from the air and turning it into the into the just, but it it's there um if you know how to take it from the air and transform it into a usable form for growing growing crops and and food. And this is a portable, self-contained um solar regeneratively powered unit that would be deployable on a big cropping farm, say in the US or in Australia or in um Latin America, potentially, or also it could be in a village somewhere in Africa or in Asia where you'd be providing smaller amounts of fertilizer to the local farmers based on renewable. So you're you're you're disconnecting that link to the global fertilizer supply chain and the geopolitical risks of that. You're taking away the energy needed to produce that fertilizer, and you're giving much more, I guess, local resilience and and potentially food security to these local communities because they're not so exposed uh to all those geopolitical and economic winds.
Frere Byrne:Yeah, totally. I mean, I I think the the great irony is you know, the where you look at you look at the interest uh that we have for our technology, and it's it's you know it's all driven by the same types of market drivers. But if you if you look at you know a small sub-Saharan African farm that is you know anywhere from kind of one to ten hectares, but on average around one hectare. Um and you know, often those types of farms are a split of subsistence and small-scale commercial farming. And then you look at a a cereal cropper on the east coast in Australia, you know, where you'll have farms that are 10,000 hectares, in some cases up to 400,000, 500,000 hectares, you know, you get massive farms. Generally, the problems that though that that those farmers are faced with are very are very similar. You know, they're they're no matter, and and that's and that is with very different purchasing power in the economic operations of those farms. They're like exposed to hugely volatile price inputs, um, supply chain is incredibly intermittent, um, and often those two things are linked, and then there's little control around what product actually turns up in the port and gets to the farm. Um like it's a it's a it's a fascinating problem because it doesn't it doesn't distinguish between the rich and the poor, is is the is the way I like to think about it. Um and we can solve the challenges with the technology that we you know that we produce um for all of those sectors or segments, however you want to put it, um, with a with a modular chemical plan. Um it's a it's a it's an interesting to it's an interesting position to be in because we we're hitting the trifector of you know climate, supply chain, um, you know, and ultimately price and input security.
Ash Sweeting:So as that's fascinating what you said about the the sub-Saharan African farmer and the and the you know Australian broadacre cropping farmer. Um, but if we take a step back from your business's perspective and delivering the unit to those different markets, you know, there's there's a plethora of different challenges that are not as similar as their decision-making process. So how do you how do you address that? You know, obviously you've got the the need to scale, grow revenue, get the technology in the market, work through whatever regulatory or approval processes, um, and then you know, scale that across different geographies um to have this technology providing the benefits that it can. So, how do you how do you approach that?
Frere Byrne:Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, you're you're right. That the customer problems might be the same. The market is very different from sub-Saharan Africa to Australia. Certainly the regulatory environment is very different. Um, ironically, uh, the stuff that goes on onto our food in Australia is typically not regulated. So when the fertilizer market is not a regulated market in Australia. It certainly is in terms of labeling standards and things like that, but mostly from a safety perspective. Um, where it gets where it gets a little bit hairier is often the you know, often the chemicals that we use to feed our plants are also the chemicals we use to you know uh blow things out of the ground and make bombs and all types of things like that. So that that's where you start to get heavier regulation and more controls in the market. Um but to kind of step back to to the crux of what what you I think what I think you're asking is um you know the the the the biggest problems in the market at the moment as they exist, certainly as as as we see it, are mostly are mostly related to supply chain. And that's the that that's you know if you look at if you look at price volatility and supply intermittentcy, all of those are in some way, shape, or form a factor of um global supply chains and and turbulent geopolitics. Um and so you know that there are there are a number of themes, and there's you know many different technology companies around the world chasing the the same mecca that we chase, which is um you know distributed green chemical production. The two the two big drivers of that, and they're largely um, you know, they're largely not depend not too dependent on the regulatory structures or the ability to distribute the technology, uh the ability to get your technology to the endpoint of consumption, so the ability to actually decentralize the technology, and that could mean in the case of agriculture, it could mean on the farm, but it could but more often we talk about decentralized tech as you know regional hubs that might do whole you know whole regions, and there is a degree of and forgive the kind of cliche of this term, but you know, last mile distribution. Um so that that's a huge factor. And then the other one is access to cheap renewable power, you know, in order to in order to decarbon decarb tech, but in most cases actually provide the key ingredient to m to be able to produce these chemicals. Like they're the things that enable the the um the ability to get these these types of new you know new technologies out into the market. Um unlike and unlike unlike your traditional supply chains, um there is a lot less, you know, there is a lot less reliance on uh you know safe and stable trade routes, you know, lack of lack of war, you know, lack of international war with with key um input producers. Um and so it's it's it's a it it becomes a very kind of stable market to play into. Um and so for us, it's it for us it's an interesting one because I think you're able to hit the you're able to kill many birds with one stone, so so to speak. I think the the the question is, um at the moment, you know, there are many different technologies that are trying to do this thing, that's trying to do the same thing in very in many different markets, actually. You know, this is not just a nitrogen problem, it's a hydrocarbons problem. Um, you see it in a range of different uh you know industrial B2B chemicals. Um and so it it's it will be interesting to see what technologies win and why.
Ash Sweeting:That's that's really interesting. Um, 20 odd years ago, I um managed a um seed and fertilizer distribution project across seven or eight um provinces in southern Afghanistan, where we had to get um it was only a bag of fertilizer per farmer, but we did distributed these bags of fertilizer to 120,000 farmers across all these provinces. And this was kind of when the war was kicking off, and the the the logistics of getting them there through whatever um checkpoints, whoever controlled those checkpoints and dealing with whatever palms needed to be greased to do that, the managing of um it was all distributed through the local departments of agriculture, the provincial departments of agriculture, and let's just say the the corruption and graft that went on in that space, and that there was there was no no shortages of of challenges to and then which farmers were selected to participate compared to which ones weren't. Um so having ways to to get uh and obviously this is a place where food security is not not food is not secure, um, and having having a way for these farmers to be able to produce better and and more food would be have huge implications, and and all those, I guess, political issues aren't one-off. They all have repercussions that undermine society and trust in governance and all sorts of things like that. So, you know, it's a very, a very big issue, and having other solutions is is hugely valuable.
Frere Byrne:Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, and you you you you prompted something that I that I forgot about a moment ago. Like that, you know, electrification is one big theme, decentralization is the other big theme. It's not just about the big supply chains, though, it's about all the intermediaries and as you put it, kind of greasy palms that that feed into the process. And so the ability to kind of the ability to deploy technology that's static, you know, at the end point, um, theoretically should bypass a lot of you know a lot of those intermediaries, at least after it's been deployed.
Ash Sweeting:Yeah, one off. Um in terms of in terms of what it looks like and how it operates, um you know, do you need do you need what levels of of education and and technical capability do you need to operate operate at? What sort of education systems or training systems need to come come with it and how how big is it? What does it look like?
Frere Byrne:Well, maybe maybe I'll step back because I kind of gave a bit of a a foray into the technology and how it works, but just to give a little bit more detail. So so for the listeners, what We've developed is a zero emissions modular chemical plant that produces industrial grade nitrates and ammonia from air, water, and renewable electricities. So we cut fossil fuels out of the process, that hydrogen out of the process, which many people have heard of when it comes to green harbour bosch and green ammonia production, and end up with a process that's completely emissions-free. And so we call that modular chemical plant NFIX. And in its main form, it's deployed as a single 40-foot containerized unit on a farm, or those 40-foot units can be racked like batteries to gigaton scale plants for the manufacturing and production of regional health facilities. However, we have also got a number of use case applications where we downscale those units to meet the need of the use case in the field. So, for example, we also scaled down those units for direct integration into protected cropping, like greenhouses and things like that, out of buyant scale. And then recently we've just taken a grant from the Gates Foundation, which you'll be able to read about on their website, where we have actually recently built our first version of a very, very small scale unit, which goes on a sub-Saharan African farm, on a subsistence farm and provides just the amount of nitrogen required for that family's crop. And so that's probably akin, Ash, to the uh Afghan bag of fertilizer per farm scale that you talk about. Um, the idea there being that we we want to be able to produce nitrogen at the farm using solar and rainwater harvesting below the lowest uh commodity prices ever for urea, you know, in the last 20, 30 years. And we have a hypothesis that that is a very achievable thing for us to do with our tech. And let's start testing that in the next couple of months.
Ash Sweeting:You're building something with that scale and targeted at um sub-Saharan African farmers. And I imagine the to use it is something that you don't need to have to be pretty user-friendly. PhD in chemical engineering to do.
Frere Byrne:That's correct. I mean, ultimately our plants, so our plants are operatorless. Like it, we we try and split the whole model of uh chemical production. So you don't run the big centralized plants, we've got small-scale modular plants that rack like batteries. Um, you know, we're using electricity, not fossil fuels. Everything's deployed in a 40-foot container because we don't make anything bigger than a 40-foot container. The idea is you don't spend 15 years building these big chemical plants. When you do them big, you knock them out quickly. Um, and you you have components that are plug and play and to be rapidly assembled. But importantly, they're also operate operatoress. So everything is run with power electronics. Um, even the very first units that we ran in New South Wales with our first field tests, we ran out of our facilities in Marrickville from our from our desks eventually. And so, yeah, all of the complex stuff that happens in the units is done um is done using algorithms. Um, and then all of the stuff that needs to be done uh you know at the point of consumption in the field is typically your regular behavior and practice. You know, top up your tanks, apply your chemicals, those types of things. Um yeah, so so very little training required. I think one of the things I've seen is, and you you've probably you've probably seen this a lot, Ash. I know you've looked at a lot of and been involved in lots of different emerging technology, particularly in the ag space. But one of the things that you always hear people say is all we need to do is train people. And I I always think that that's a uh that's a pretty quick way to make most things not work.
Ash Sweeting:I I uh from my experience working in the places I've worked, I I it's been very frequently reinforced that the the human challenges, social, cultural, etc., perceptions, ideas, are generally much more challenging than the technical or the financial ones. There's so that's that reinforces um once again that perception.
Frere Byrne:Yeah, well, we have the luxury of having all of those challenges.
Ash Sweeting:That's brilliant, though. That's brilliant. The fact that um if it if it doesn't require behavioral change, that's that's that's a huge advantage.
Frere Byrne:In terms of can can I can I grab can I grab you there? Actually, there's one because there's one point. It doesn't not necessarily require behavioral change, it just doesn't, it doesn't require education to use it. I think one of the things that we talk about a lot is you know we can make ammonia and we can make ammonium and ultimately many of the products that exist in the market today. But for the for the emissions story that we spoke about, and actually efficiency, um we encourage uh we encourage using higher value substitutes. So nitric acid is is uh is just a water-based nitrate solution, and we turn that into something that is pH neutral. Um but I'm you know plasma leap and many people many of the kind of more cutting-edge, I think, emerging thinkers in the market here would generally push this idea that liquids, uh liquid substitutes for ammonia and urea in the AGS base are really good for two reasons. They allow they allow often weather-independent application and you know flexibility. Um, and then in the case where you're using nitrate and not urea or ammonia, where a lot of it ends up unfortunately uh volatilizing into the air or or in bulk rainfall events, washing into you know, washing away as leech it or run off. Um you instead apply chemical forms that are readily absorbed by the plant. So we so we focus on nitrate solutions that can be applied flexibly in such a way that most of the nitrate ends up in the plant. It ends up being cheaper, um, you know, more efficient and greener. And so but but it does require some behavioral change because about 60% of the world at the moment spreads and throws solids onto their crops. Yep. Um and and we and so we uh are in the interesting position of uh, in many cases, getting people to move over from solid fertilizer fertilizer application and pellets to liquids. It's not hard because the benefits are uh are pretty obvious, but we you know not everything is super frictionless.
Ash Sweeting:No, that that all makes sense, and and there's there's no shortage of conversations going on about the overuse of fertilizer from a water pollution, from a nitrous oxide, from a just a financial perspective, that the amount that's lost. So we probably don't need to reopen that can we need to reopen that can of worms. Um you mentioned hydrocarbons as well. So when I think of hydrocarbons, I think as of fuels like um, you know, petrol or or um propane gas or or cooking fuels and those sorts of things. Um and thinking through, you know, the air has got carbon dioxide, so there's carbon there, the air has got hydrogen, so there's hydrogen there. Um, and then that's hydrocarbons, a mixture of of those compounds. So what's what are you doing in that space?
Frere Byrne:Yeah, I mean, the less less focused on the air at the moment, just because despite the fact that it's you know, we've got 400 ppm of CO2, it's not a super rich source of of fuel production.
Ash Sweeting:Okay.
Frere Byrne:I mean, certainly I'm not making a comment about uh about not needing to deal with the problem. It's just not it, it's nothing when you look at you you compare the opportunity to point source emissions and things like that. Okay. Um but yeah, yeah, so so uh as you you know, as we discussed, our first focus is providing zero emissions, nitric acid, and eigenmining. Uh the same reactors that we produce are also capable of synthesizing crude oil, uh, SAFS, methanol, um from natural gas or biogas. The other thing we can do is make carbon monoxide and hydrogen peroxide from from raw point source emissions. Now, the opportunity there is really interesting. You're you're you're bang on. It's exactly the type of things that you're talking about, typically hydrocarbon fuels that power heavy goods. That's what we focus on because I my view is electrification of those markets. The things that need high energy densities, um, you know, I I think that those fuel markets are not going to die if anything goes, they'll grow over time. Um, so when we when we think about markets like uh the aviation sector, where you need high energy dense fuels, like those they're not going away anytime soon. Um and so the beauty of our tech, particularly when you think about things like sustainable aviation fuel, is if in instead of taking routes where we're doing things like mixing bioethanol-based fuels with kerosene in order to make them sustainable by name, instead we're able to produce uh, you know, effectively produce synthetic fuels directly from what would otherwise be fossil fuel type emissions. Um so it's a really powerful route for us. I would say it's much earlier stage technology, but it's a really high value application of the reactors, which we are running to ground very quickly.
Ash Sweeting:So, on that, from the business perspective, you're going the market, the nitrogen product will be in the market first, and then the the hydrocarbon one will follow along at whatever time frames um you wish.
Frere Byrne:Yeah, we're breaking we're breaking ground on Athost two um regional hubs at the moment, both of which are in Australia, one in New South Wales and one in Tasmania. Uh and I would say it's probably about 24 months for us to get our hydrocarbon fuel, hydrocarbon fuels, particularly this e this e-crude product that we make out of a beaker uh into something that is an industrial scale pilot.
Ash Sweeting:And it's the same basic technology that's driving driving both same technology.
Frere Byrne:We're driving an electricity through a grass gas to break it down and reform it into valuable products.
Ash Sweeting:And that's what can you obviously that's a highly, highly commercially um important secret and patented and all those sorts of things. So what can you share with us about um how that works?
Frere Byrne:Uh okay. Um so I I I don't want to go too much into plasma. I I I'm uh just for the benefit of the all of the audience. But uh that that process that I mentioned earlier, the Birklin Idee that was that ran on Niagara Falls, was a plasma uh driven chemical process. But the problem with that was it was it was highly energy efficient because it would it was using heat to heat the bulk of it of the gas to turn it into that into plasma in that state where it's highly reactive. Um we use we induce an uh an electric field and pass a current through that gas, exciting only the electrons. So we don't have to, it's a much more energy efficient approach, and energy efficiency is the key you know, is the key ingredient there. Um and in order to do that, and and this is a bit of a hint as to how you do it, um, you have to be really precise in how you excite that gas. You have to create just an just the right amount of vibrational energy to destabilize the chemical bonds that exist in that gas without creating waste energy in the process, which means you need really precise power electronics and you need to be able to you provide the exact uh waveform into that gas in order to break it and not waste waste electricity through the process.
Ash Sweeting:So in order to do that, sorry, I was just gonna imagine, especially with the hydrocarbons, it would be very easy to spend more energy creating the final product than you actually get out of the final product.
Frere Byrne:I mean, there's here in lies herein lies the great challenge of industry, not you know, not spending more energy to make something than than you get in in you know, get you get in the stock that's ready to harvest. Um you're precise. I mean the way we do it is we just we hire really good people, you know, that are able to that are able to create very, very cutting-edge barelectronics that can do just that. Ironically, nitrogen is harder than hydrocarbons, like the triple nitrogen bond that exists in the air is a really hard bond to break. It's why most you'll see a lot of companies building electrolyzer technology that generally doesn't make much product, which is a bit sad, but then's the brakes. Um, but for us, you know, that it has been a it's been a multi-year journey getting to this point. And we've had to pull people out of you know, um TSMC, space machines, uh, you know, uh our CTO is a guy who developed the power electronics that run the Hadron Collider at CERN. It's required some pretty smart minds to wrap their head around this problem. Um, it's not a uh and then you know, and it becomes the intersection of complex power electronics and physic plasma physics, and then you can plan agronomy and industrial operations, it's a uh it's a bit of a Goldilocks uh scenario, as you can imagine.
Ash Sweeting:That is wonderful. We're coming up to time, so before we go, is there anything you'd like to add that we haven't already discussed?
Frere Byrne:Um look, I think uh I think just for the you know for the benefit of the tapes, um you know, we are we we are people that are excited about uh both climate impact, you know, or impact I should say, from a climate perspective, but also um from a poverty perspective when it comes to making a lot a better place. Yeah, I think um looking after the environment is one thing, looking after the people, looking after the people that live in that environment is another. And I think there are many ways to do that. You know, we are one input in a very large supply chain of things required to run the world. Um, food is just one of them. But it is something that needs to be green, highly accessible and affordable, um, and in my opinion, made locally. And we talk a lot about sovereign security. Um, but the systems that I think that have run, you know, that have run uh fertilizer production for the agricultural market to date are increasingly broken and not providing the um not providing the function they should to the whole world. So, you know, it's it's you know it's an exciting space for us. Um I think you know we're we're very excited by deep tech with real impact. You know, we generally say that we are building, we're one of the few companies building uh technology with real impact and zero green premium. So certainly anyone in the ag space or the technology space that's interested in that should come and have a chat and chat with us.
Ash Sweeting:Brant, thank you so very, very much for joining me today. It's been an absolute pleasure. Ash, thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to the AshCloud. Please subscribe to Ash Cloud if you have enjoyed this podcast, where I will continue to discuss food sustainability with guests to bring a deep understanding of the environmental, political, and cultural challenges facing our society and creative ideas on how to address them.