The SAF Podcast

The SAF Podcast: GAFT - Rethinking how HEFA finds its lipids

• SAF Investor • Season 2 • Episode 21

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In this episode of the SAF Podcast, Oscar chats with Frank Schreurs, co-founder of GAFT, about the innovative approaches his company is taking to revolutionize sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Joining us from his holiday in Sweden, Frank provides a detailed look into GAFT's mission and the challenges the aviation fuel industry faces.

Frank's career spans over two decades in the energy sector, including significant experience in oil trading, M&A, and biodiesel production. This rich background set the stage for his entrepreneurial journey into sustainable fuels. GAFT, originally a CO2 utilization company, evolved into a pioneering firm addressing the critical issue of feedstock shortages for SAF production. Frank explains how GAFT utilizes second-generation sugars, crude glycerin, and advanced electrolysis processes to create local, sustainable feedstocks from CO2 and electricity turning them into valuable lipid feedstocks for HEFA SAF production.

Frank explains GAFT's strategy to license their technology to Biofuel producers so they can upscale their crude glycerin bi-product, whilst also pursuing their own first of a kind facility to produce their lipid feedstock.

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the challenges of securing reliable and sustainable feedstock supplies. With Europe importing a majority of its used cooking oil from Asia, Frank highlights the inherent issues of dependence on external sources and potential sustainability fraud. GAFT's innovative technology aims to mitigate these risks by producing feedstocks locally, ensuring a more stable and transparent supply chain and producing feedstock that can be put straight into existing refining infrastructure.

Frank also shares insights into the investment landscape, acknowledging the hurdles but expressing optimism due to strategic interest from both financial and technology sectors. They have so far been backed by the EIC and are currently working on the series A which can find the FOAK facility and expand the team.

This episode is a must-listen for those concerned about the Used Cooking Oil importation situation and this could provide another solution to scaling the HEFA pathway and de-coupling it from Asian feedstock importation.

If you enjoyed this episode, catch our recent discussion with Mukund Karanjikar, CleanJoule: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2202964/15427620

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the SAF podcast this week. We're delighted to be joined by Frank Schruers. Am I saying that right?

Speaker 2:

Yes, absolutely correct.

Speaker 1:

Perfect. You're not just saying that to be nice to me, are you no?

Speaker 2:

no, no, no, no, no. It's quite a difficult name for non-English speakers. Even for Dutch speakers it's difficult.

Speaker 1:

But not bad, oscar. Thank you Excellent. Well, that's a good start. Frank has very kindly agreed to come to us from his holiday in Sweden at the moment, so thank you very much for doing that.

Speaker 2:

Frank. Thank you very much for doing that, frank. How are you? I'm not bad. It's actually quite a nice day here in sweden today. Yesterday it was not as good, but I think for the next uh week or so it's it's quite nice and it's a very nice temperature around 22 23, you will see. So that's all I need really to be honest with you perfect.

Speaker 1:

I'm very jealous of you right now. So should we start by you giving us a bit of your background and introduce us to GAFT and what GAFT does?

Speaker 2:

Sure, no, that's not a problem. First of all, thank you, oscar, for having us in your show. It's a great pleasure to be here and I'm more than happy to reserve some time for you, even while I'm away. So, uh, yes, a bit about my background. I've been working in the energy sector most of my career. Uh, I had a very, very brief start in an insurance company, but then I worked at utility, uh, in eco, and then I was with a, with a oil refining company called PetroPlus Some people actually may know it as Svaro, which is kind of the follow-up, if you like and then I was with Mercuria for 10 years, all in trading functions, business development, m&a, midstream. So I know the midstream oil space quite well. I'm not modest to say, say, after 25 years working in it in a professional function and, yes, in trading, business development, m&a. I owned and operated biodiesel plants and refineries, and so, no, I've got quite a good understanding of the midstream space here in Europe.

Speaker 2:

And after I left Mercuria, which is already more than 10 years ago, I decided to have a bit more of an entrepreneurial, you know, change to my career and I started the precursor of GAFT. And in the early years I still did quite a lot of work as a, as an independent consultant in M&A transactions for large infrastructure and pension funds, basically doing all sorts of transactions, basically doing all sorts of transactions in midstream, from mostly oil storage but also some refinery transactions. So that's how it came about. So that's kind of my background. I've been working commercial functions. In the meantime I picked up quite a bit on the technical important elements of SAF. Of course I have to, logically, and also, since I've been working on this for close to 10 years, you learn also quite a bit by doing so. Is that a good background description, oscar? That's excellent.

Speaker 1:

Perfect, very good. What is GAFT? What is GAFT trying to do?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's good that you ask I mean, I think just maybe a little bit of a step back how we came up with SAF. Specifically because initially we started as a CCU company and my co-founder, robert, I met him in the last six months of my career at Mercuria and I decided to basically post my professional career, start talking to people who had kind of a different angle to the energy market, rather than talking to the people I've been knowing for the last 20 years, who basically are, you know, conventional oil people, so to say. And Robert started to talk to me about CCU. To me at that point, a quite unknown subject started to talk to me about CCU To me at that point, a quite unknown subject and, honestly, when I talked to my peers and my friends in the sector, there was not a lot of awareness of CCU altogether.

Speaker 2:

Ccu for the people who don't know it, basically stands for CO2 utilization and storage and we, particularly Robert, was talking about using CO2 as a feedstock and he had some ideas how to build a new CO2-alert crawler system that would not make hydrogen but would make liquid hydrocarbon. And I thought that maybe it's not a bad idea and I jumped into it and we started this company and then, once we were going and took off, we went from governmental grant to governmental grant. We put in some of our own money and we built this machine and it actually worked. So we were making from CO2 and renewable power intermittent renewable power. We were making a liquid hydrocarbon that was easy to store and handle, unlike hydrogen or ammonia, for that matter, which is very complex and, if not prohibitive to store and handle in large volumes. But we had a very simple molecule that, if I had it in in a cup right here in my car, where I am now, it would be completely safe to have it. So so we, as I said, we we started to scale. We got more grant money coming in, we started to build a large containerized electrolysis system and at that point we started to wonder what to do with this liquid hydrocarbon, and that maybe sounds a little bit naive. Obviously, we had our ideas.

Speaker 2:

We were looking on conventional applications for this particular molecule, which were not extremely large, and so I basically jumped in into into the company and said you know, we need to have a large scale application. That was 2017, 2018, and so we, we started to look at fermentation, among other things, and I thought that was quite a nice angle because, first of all, fermentation is, uh, conventional. We use convention. We were thinking of using conventional technology. It's a lot, it is large scale and, more importantly, we we, we bumped into some people who were actually using our molecule that we made from the electrolysis to make a lipid a fatty acid if you like feedstock for biofuels production.

Speaker 2:

And immediately, with my background in the oil industry, I thought this I like because it's a commoditized product. It has a huge impact. It's a commoditized product, it has a huge impact. I knew from my days at Mercuria that at that point it was already a challenge to source this UCO. There was already a lot imported from Asia for biofuels production and I thought this is really it. So this is a good business going forward and obviously now we're in the midst of it with HEFAifa taking off and it's proven to be the right direction. So we added the people to the team who had the expertise on the fermentation ronald and marine. They brought together with them some some multi-year testing on the lab scale of producing these lipids and that's how GAFT came all about.

Speaker 1:

So I mean that's an amazing story and it seems to me you're sitting somewhere between the sort of the ESAF process and the heifer pathway and applying sort of future generations of biofuel into the already established heifer pathway. What do you think are the sort of the challenges to heifer that mean there is a gap for you guys to come in and provide the solution?

Speaker 2:

Yes, I mean, we always say, you know, we've got a perfectly fine technology to produce heifer, which is heifer, always say you know, we've got a perfectly fine technology to produce saff, which is heifer. Um, you know, and if we would have enough feedstock, we would not even be contemplating like, if you also alcohol to jet in a way, and this whole safty would be non-event. You know, we wouldn't be around, uh, there would be no need for feedstock, because that's what we actually do. We don't produce saff, but we do produce feedstock and, in all honesty, oscar, your, your, uh, your podcast, which would attract a lot less attention because it would be, it would be a non-event. The fact that there is not enough feedstock is, I think, the sole reason that we invest time and money into e-fuels and to alcohol to jet, because there's just not enough lipid feedstock around. So that's actually how we fit in. We don't focus on the SAF as such, because that comes a lot with regulation and ASTM approval. We don't have a new way to produce SAF, we just focus on the feedstock, which is completely deregulated. So as long as we have a fatty acid or an ester and it can be processed by a HAFA plant, you're in business and that's exactly where the shortage comes from. It's the lipid feedstock. Why people are looking to look at other pathways like alcohol to jet and e-fuels, as I said. So we're looking to fill up this gap of feedstock demand that's already there today. Uh, that will be exaggerated uh, exacerbated uh, which will be exacerbated in in also in the uh in the coming years, going into 2030 and beyond. So that's how we fit in and and how we fit in with the e-fuels angle.

Speaker 2:

We've actually got two ways to make these lipid feedstocks. One way is is, let's say, the plain vanilla way it's. It's it's even for us. The more simpler way, where we basically use uh, second generation sugars or crude glycerin as a feedstock in our fermentation to make our our lipid product and that's also also our go-to market right now. We've also got a bit more complicated uh process, because I mean, in a way, not complicated technologically wise, but it's just another process in front where we make our sugar replacer, which is actually our liquid hydrocarbon that comes from the electrolysis. We put it upstream from the fermentation and so we can use biomass derived feedstock in our fermentation, crude glycerin and sugars. But we also can use e-fuels or power to liquids derived feedstock in our fermentation by using CO2, electricity and water in our electrolysis.

Speaker 2:

So we have the biomass pathway to make the lipids and we've got e-fuels pathway to make the lipids using co2, electricity and water, and that's kind of our angle. So we don't make e-fuels all the way. Like you know, the market views e-fuels to go all the way to SAF, right with with fissure drops processes and so forth. We you can rather call an e-feedstock rather than an e-fuel, and this e-feedstock you can then process in a HAFA plant, in a biodiesel transacification plant or even in a refinery to make your e-fuels. And that's, I think, our angle on the e-fuel side.

Speaker 1:

Something that you mentioned at the beginning was the obvious challenges around feedstocks, and used cooking oil often grabs all the headlines. I mean, europe imports 80% of its used cooking oil. 60% of it comes from China, other countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, and there's not a lot of feedstock security in the sense that you can't get enough from Europe and there's arguments to say, very convincing arguments to say you can't even get enough from China, malaysia, indonesia to cope with the demand going forward. So is this a problem? Is this a problem? Should?

Speaker 2:

there be more emphasis on looking at securing feedstock supplies locally as opposed to relying on these Asian producers. Well, yes, let me take a step back here as well, because, first of all, this has been known for many years, right and uh, so it's not, it's not a secret. We know that we don't have enough feedstock globally. Hence, you know, when you look at the market forecast, they say until 2030 you can basically produce the south with with heifa, but beyond that you need alcohol to jettity fuels. Um, so this feedstock issue was always the case and personally, I think the feedstock issue certainly if you look at alcohol to jet, that's also a biomass derived product. And I think what all these biomass derived products have in common is that it's very difficult to source them on the long-term basis, right? So by a SAF plan, you build for 10, 15, 20 years and ideally, you can source your feedstock on the long-term basis, providing comfort to investors and to banks and to end users, that you have got kind of a stable processing margin which also helps you to raise bank financing. And I think that's one of the key issues with AFA, but also with Alcoa2Jet or municipal waste, is that they're all short-term markets where you can source your feedstock. Let's call it three to six months out, that's it. And beyond that, you're fully exposed to the margin because you don't know what your feedstock price will be. So that's it. And beyond that, you are fully exposed to the margin because you don't know what your, what your feedstock price will be.

Speaker 2:

So that's one big challenge and, irrespective of the availability, that's the big, the second biggest challenge in a way, because, as you rightfully say, we're already net importer here in europe. Can asia supply sufficient feedstock? Um, I doubt it, also looking at the uh, at the, the forecasts. So where we come in is we. We with our technology, we, we are able to produce locally feedstocks with electricity and co2 and also with the, with the second generation sugars here in Europe. So you're not depending on third party inputs and imports anymore from overseas from China, from Asia, from the US or wherever, which gives a lot of feedstock security to HAFA producers, but it also gives them an increased security on robust and stable processing margins, which is equally important than the availability of feedstock.

Speaker 1:

So the other issue that comes with Asian SAF is the fraudulent aspects, the issue of palm oil mislabelling, misrepresentation in terms of the sustainability criteria, but that's not so much of an issue with what you guys are doing, is it?

Speaker 2:

No, not at all.

Speaker 1:

So this is a solution to that problem as well.

Speaker 2:

Not at all. No, I mean, if you produce locally, you have far more control on what the ultimate source of the feedstock is. I mean with electricity and CO2, it's quite simple because it's all sourced locally and if you have second generation sugars, that is also more controllable in a way than buying used cooking oil from China, for that matter, where you have no idea where it comes from and we all read the papers. So there's a lot of issues around the certification aspect of those feedstocks and we don't have that.

Speaker 1:

Another thing you mentioned the issue around short-term feedstock availability and the vulnerability you are to market fluctuations in terms of the cost price. Is that something you're exposed to in terms of glycerin and those sugars? Yes, we are.

Speaker 2:

No, that's also a very small market. I mean, the crude glycerin market has the same issues as UCO. In fact, glycerin is mostly produced by first generation biodiesel. Any biodiesel plant produces around 10% crude glycerin. So we have the same issues there, maybe even worse, but that's not really longer term our focus.

Speaker 2:

Anyway, I think what we're trying to offer to, I think what we're offering to biofuels producers is a very, very nice add-on, relatively small investment to basically turn their waste product, which crude glycerin is I mean, just look at the prices between 75 and 150 euros a ton. That's not a commodity price, that's not a valuable product price, that's a waste price. So we can convert that, that that waste into, into a new feedstock, which is a far higher price. Let's call it, for argument's sake, a thousand dollars a ton. Uh, for lipids, uh. So you can really see that this is a very profitable business, even if we don't 100% of the glycerin to lipids, but 30, which is also a big number. So that's kind of our launching platform, how we look to establish our name in the market. We learned from other businesses that want to scale extremely fast to large-scale 100,000 ton production and we see them not being successful in that what we're looking to do is is looking at, let's say, let's call it 3 to 10 kt lipid production and what is helping us there is the huge margin that is for these markets. So I will get back on this margin robustness a bit later.

Speaker 2:

On the second generation sugar, yes, you're right, there's not a lot of second generation sugar there, but there's a lot of companies investing into cellulose-based sugars, for example.

Speaker 2:

So we don't see that as as a, you know, as a large-scale production facility way today, but certainly in a couple of years, when also these technologies come to maturity.

Speaker 2:

And we've already been approached by some second generation sugar producers who basically send us samples to see if they can use our technology to straight process into hefa and refineries, rather than using those sugars to make alcohol that everybody likes to do, to go to the alcohol, to jet pathway and uh and, and you know if, if you know, we don't think that's a good idea If you have sugars, give them to us, first or second generation sugars, because it's very simple We've got a fermentation pathway to make from a sugar a complex lipid product rather than a fermentation so modern nature, rather than going to a very complex alcohol jet plant which is more expensive to build first of all, and it yields you less SAF per kilogram of sugar than through our fermentation pathway. So we have very, very good visibility on future production and we think that's an extremely interesting route for us to team up with second-generation sugar producers to look at these pathways.

Speaker 1:

Is that one of the major attractions of this you think is the stability in terms of production of these sugars into these lipids and also the value that you can give them later down the line in order to, say, sell them onto a heifer pathway or sell the sugars to you to get the value in the production of the amount of heifer.

Speaker 2:

So it's kind of a double-edged sword it's a double-edged sword. It's a double-edged sword. It's a triple-edged sword, if you like, because we can start with crude glycerin. As I said, crude glycerin is not a huge market, but we limit our rollout only to biodiesel producers Because I know from experience, if you go too big you basically create from crude glycerin, instead of a waste product, a valuable feedstock and then you kill your own margin. I've seen that happening before in my career and we don't want that.

Speaker 2:

So what we say to a biodiesel producer you can build a crude glycerin to feedstock plant for your you know. You can process the feedstock against to biodiesel, but only for the own volume that you have. You cannot source outside. If you want to go outside, you can go to second-generation sugars. First of all, you can buy waste molasses that are not fit for animal feed or any type of sugars that are available already there.

Speaker 2:

We've got good results for that, and beyond that you can put opportunistically our electrolysis system upstream to make with curtailed electricity and co2 that you produce yourself, you can make more lipid feed stock, and that's kind of the path we were looking at um and and once we have investigated and capitalized on that pathways in the next few years. We can then start looking at larger plants, that's, I call this 28, 2028, 2029, 2030, looking at 50 to 100 KT GAFT plants that are capable of producing large scale volumes of lipids, not by crude glycerin, obviously, but by the unfolding second generation sugar market and by the opportunities that our electrolyzer will increasingly offer going into the end of this decade. So that's kind of how we're looking to scale our technology.

Speaker 1:

So the licensing of your technology say a renewable diesel facility to give them the opportunity to upscale the glycerin that's produced is feeding into your ability to have owner production facilities later down the line. Owner operate style. So you run the two simultaneously, is that right?

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean, I think it goes without saying that as a technology company, we first need to build a first of a kind plant or first of a kind plants. So the early plans that we will operate is it will probably be under a joint venture type structure in a special purpose company, where we take a large percentage of the ownership and our customer takes a large percentage of the ownership. That's not our ultimate plan going forward, because if you look at the people that work at our company, we're a privately owned R&D company. We're good at developing technology to bring that technology to the market and I personally have experience in running and operating and owning large production facilities. But that that's not. That's not the case for most of the people in our team.

Speaker 2:

So, beyond the first of a kind plant, we will be focusing on the licensing model. Uh, you know, uh, because you know it's it's complex to run processing plants. I mean, we offer our customers not one feedstock possibility. They can use crude glycerin, they can use sugar and they can use co2 and electricity. That's basically. There are a lot of large producers around that know how to play these optionalities, that have the balance sheets to source all these feedstocks, and we are here to focus on the technology and I think you know that's. The pie of SAF is big enough. That's kind of the area that we like to focus on on this technology development.

Speaker 1:

How easy is it for you to for one of the sort of biomass earlier facilities to be retrofitted in order to deal with the carbon dioxide and that sort of production, that sort of east e feedstock production side of things? Are they two separate facilities or can you sort of switch from one to the other as sort of technologies and opinions, sort of scales?

Speaker 2:

No, it's fully flexible. It's fully flexible. Our fermentation technology is agnostic to the feedstocks we identify, to the glycerin, to the sugar and to our own sugar replacer that we produce from the electrolysis. So you don't need to invest in new or additional processes. You can use the same kit that you have already there. If you want to go larger, obviously, then you need to expand the fermentation, but that's also in a way scale out, just like electrolysis.

Speaker 2:

The core of these plants are fermenters. For a first pilot we're looking at 500 cubes each for a fermenter. Sorry, for our first commercial plants that's 500 cube per fermenter. So in the first commercial plants there will be two fermenters, a bit of downstream equipment to take the fat out of the fermentation broth and some tanks. That's roughly it. So very simple, manageable infrastructure that can also be operated by biodiesel producers. And then if they want to grow this business, possibly beyond their own greslin supplies, then obviously you need to expand the fermenters with maybe to absorb some sugars. But also if, and then if you want to also benefit from you know, uh, favorably priced electricity, then you need to obviously build the, the electrolysis, upstream. But that can all be kind of add-on investments, if they have the space. Of course, you know space that's.

Speaker 1:

That's also important so another aspect that we haven't touched on is your e feedstock process can work with intermittent electricity and, yes, anyone that does any form of power to liquid production. They always talk about the energy and requirements in order to make it work and the demand that it will put on current electricity systems.

Speaker 2:

So how does your process work without that sort of constant electricity demand? Yes, well, it's a good point. I think not a lot of people talk about this intermittency aspect. Even if you look at the you know the well-known consultants who write about power to liquids you really have to look very hard to find something there, and we think it's a big, big problem to coming ahead of us, because here in europe we're looking to uh, to run our energy market on intermittent electricity and all of these e-fuel processes. They are high temperature, fissure drops, reverse water gas, shift based processes, uh, you know, ranging from 250, 300 degrees c to 600 degrees c.

Speaker 2:

That's not something, that is not something that you can switch off, right. So you need a constant flow of hydrogen and carbon monoxide to go into these processes, and if you've intermittent electricity as the origin of these molecules, you need to either store a lot of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which is, as I said, prohibitive I can't, I can't see that happening or you need a lot of batteries, which is also very expensive, right? So we don't need any of that, because what we do in our atrocious, which is fully flexible, to intimate electricity, we store this liquid hydrocarbon that I said. I can take that here with me in my car. It's non-toxic, it's non-explosive. You can store that ambient pressure and temperature in a mild steel tank, all diesel tank if you like. The ports are full of them. So that's our battery.

Speaker 2:

You know, we, we produce enough of this liquid when the sun shines and the wind blows and when not, we can basically buff, take from our buffer enough of this sugar replacing molecule to feed to our little microorganisms to produce the fat that goes continuously into a heifer plan, because also a heifer plan you don't want to shut off and on right. That's also continuous 24 7 process and we have kind of in our own process from electricity cn2 into a stable, storable molecule we can feed continuously into the fermentation and then onwards into the heEPA plant. We don't need any complicated battery storage that is expensive or very expensive and complicated hydrogen or carbon monoxide storage to keep the downstream process going. We need any of that and that's making our process a lot simpler and cheaper to build. We process at ambient temperature and ambient pressure. I can almost say right, certainly, compared to some of our competitors, both on the alcohol-to-jet side and on the e-fuel side, which run into these issues at some point.

Speaker 1:

So I mean you touched on it there presumably the economic benefits in terms of the cost of manufacturing and therefore the cost you can sell your feedstock is at a significant advantage because you don't have those energy requirements, particularly when you can compare it to the sort of PTL, esaf stuff being produced. Yes, compare it to the sort of PTL, esaf stuff being produced?

Speaker 1:

Yes, so another thing I wanted to ask you about is it's well known in the UK mandate that there's a plan for a heifer cap, and I just wanted your thoughts on that in terms of because obviously you're filling into this pathway. Do you think, I mean first of all, what are your thoughts on that? Do you think there's sort of room to change that if you can go and say, look, we can actually make this pathway more sustainable and adapt it, make it more scalable and use these sort of to make it more scalable and use these sort of e-feedstocks you're producing.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I mean, I've seen the statements also the written statements from the UK Parliament, and indeed they're talking about a cap on feedstock used in the HEPA technology. But they also recognize that until other types of SAF are commercially available, they believe that this pathway will still take an important part in the rollout of SAF in the UK. So it's kind of typical I would say yes, they say they want to ban it or cap, cap it, but they also know that there's no alternative and that's exactly what we are saying. You know, we, we offer the alternative to existing use cooking oils, um, you know, uh for saff. So we don't think there's there's reason for any concern.

Speaker 2:

Uh, you know, just just buy our technology and you can produce abundantly, certainly with uh, and competitively to other pathways. So and and then my personal view on this I think it's never good to to cap things or to limit things, because the only only thing you create is more diversion in an already tightly supplied market. You make basically two markets and if you want to keep prices competitive, you make one big market for feedstock, because the moment you start limiting that in buckets, you will only have an inflationary aspect. You will increase the prices ultimately, that's my's, my view, I mean that is.

Speaker 1:

I think you've just hit the nail on the head there and I think it's also a great way of you know if they are going to implement this cap. There are going to be all these facilities that have just been built to produce heifer, use heifer to make.

Speaker 2:

No, correct, which then become obsolete through the years.

Speaker 1:

This is another way of keeping that infrastructure, influencing and making sort of a positive impact, rather than standing idle or having to be totally retrofitted to something else.

Speaker 2:

I think you say something very important here, oscar, and that's exactly when we talk to customers. That's kind of the uh, the uh, the concern, the underlying concern that we hear more and more changing regulation. So just imagine you. You say you're completely right, you invent and you build and invest in this multi hundred million euro uh euro facility to make SAF, and then at some point the regulator says, well, you know, we want this and that we want it slightly different. Then you sit with this investment. So that's not good, and that's even more true for some of the pathways that are known to be more expensive than HEFA, for example, like eFUELfuels. So what we offer our customers is a far more robust, resilient model here, because you invest in a certain pathway which is even more competitive than use cooking oil, which is the crude glycerin, more competitive to alcohol, to jet, which is based on second generation sugar here in Europe but first generation sugar in the US because it's allowed there. So you've got a multi feedstock plant that you can play either way. And then, when, when you know rule regulation becomes more robust, going into the you know, the second part of this decade, you can upgrade this facility to enhance it with power to liquids.

Speaker 2:

But you don't want to do that today. I think you don't want to build a billion dollar power to liquids plant for a three to five e-fuels mandate. What you want to do, you want to make sure that you nicely cover this street of your SAF mandate altogether and you opportunistically build a very small electrolysis plant with, with with our GAF plant to make enough e-feedstock to cover, with the same outfit, your e-fuels mandate. That avoids you building into a multi 100 million billion dollar e-fuels plant. That that, where you, fully exposed to the regulator, just build a small electrolysis plant in the next couple of years. It helps you cover your e-fuels mandate.

Speaker 2:

Happy days if the e-fuels man is there to stay. Or you know we have this new second generation sugars that that is flooding the market. You you can expand in that way. If it's not, you expand it in the e-fuels way. For us what we're saying. I've come from a trading world so I know how important it is to be nimble and to be reactive with the market changes, and we offer that within our asset base. I think it's a very important feature and that also helps investors to make wise decisions on how to scale the SAF production.

Speaker 1:

Frank, you've been very generous with your time, but we can't call ourselves SAF Investor and not talk about money. Oh yes, I just wanted to ask you where are you aghast in terms of funding you've raised? Are you currently looking for investment? Are you planning towards future rounds? What's the sort of current state of affairs there on that front?

Speaker 2:

Very good, no, first of all, we're fully boot bootstrapped, so we now have a team close to 20 people and we've been very well served by dutch regulators. We're also an eic beneficiary, so thank you, eic, for supporting us. And uh, and recently we have obtained 750 000 dollars000 in a Singapore grant that is by Temasek Foundation, which is the foundation run by the Sovereign Wealth Fund, temasek. So we're about to embark on that too, so that and EIC are currently our biggest funding sources and sufficient to keep the team at this particular size funding sources and sufficient to keep the team at this particular size. We've also engaged a company called Brian Garnier, who are our sole advisors in our Series A round that we're going through. So we spend quite a lot of time together with them on preparing our process and our documentation and so forth, and we're actually talking to investors as we speak. We've got a full data room that has everything that you, that you would expect as an investor. We've got a very detailed technical economic models comparing our pathway to other pathways very important, I think, for sound decision making, also by investors. Um, and and.

Speaker 2:

So we're well prepared, I would say, and with the money that we're well prepared, I would say, and with the money that we're looking to raise, which is about 20 million euros, we're not only looking to build a first-of-a-kind plan that's roughly half of the funding that we need and the other half of the funding is equally distributed between expanding the team that runs not only our R&D facilities, but also to increase our engineering efforts, because you may remember that we're looking to license. We need a very sound and solid engineering base. We've done all the engineering in-house already for everything that we've built and done. Today, robert and his team I have some very good engineering experience. They've built refineries, so we know exactly what we're doing and we're also looking to offer that for customers. So that's that's what we need. Half of the money goes into, first of a kind plant that we're looking to uh to contract in the next couple of months, and then, secondly, the other half goes into, basically, people and some equipment.

Speaker 1:

How have you found the conversations and the investment discussions so far? Have they been largely positive or mildly frustrating?

Speaker 2:

Yes, no, no, no. I think I mean they're positive. They're positive Largely. Obviously, every conversation can be frustrating and I have to say that we've tried to do this in-house. We reached out quite a lot to financial investors and you know what's been going on into equity markets and VC markets. I think the general market is more difficult than it was a couple of years ago. I think that's only me seeing it. I think that goes for everybody.

Speaker 2:

So, with Brian Garnier, we also hope to tap into more strategics and I'm not talking about oil companies here, because we know quite a few of them ourselves and we're talking to them, but also with technology companies, because what we want to do with SAF and with the energy transition is not something that we like to do or oil companies, but it also is across the whole supply chain, also with companies that typically deliver and sell and make new technologies to support the energy transition and I have to say, most of the technologies are still relying on fossil fuel-based technologies. So we also see a lot of interest from these particular technology companies in companies like, like gaft and specifically into gaft, uh, because they know they have to do something and that's an angle that also, uh, our advisors are looking to uh, to, uh to uh. You know, bring to us to to help us getting getting on the front page there. So that's course, your SAF investor podcast is also helping us a great deal with that.

Speaker 1:

Well, if there's any investors listening, which I'm sure there are, I'm sure Frank would love to hear from you.

Speaker 2:

No, we're ready. I think we've got a very, very ambitious team full of PhDs, people with a lot of experience in the stuff that they're good at, and I think we cover basically everything that customers expect from us. You know, for my personal side, dealing with commodity markets, processing and so forth, we've got David, who has been in private practice doing a lot of energy related complex international deal with dentons and clifford chance. We've got a cevo anakin, who's been with deloitte for 10 years and, you know, last but not least, we've got a very, very big team of people who come from the more technical background, both from the r? D but also from the engineering side. So we're quite, I think, we're well equipped to serve our, our customers, and that's also the feedback we get from them at this point.

Speaker 1:

Frank, thank you for giving so much of your time on your holiday.

Speaker 2:

Hope you enjoy the rest of your time around Sweden thank you very much.

Speaker 1:

Best of luck with all the Series A and everything going on in the future.

Speaker 2:

Excellent. Thank you very much for this great interview, Oskar.