The SAF Podcast
Welcome to The SAF Podcast, the only podcast on the internet that exclusively covers sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). So if you want to find out the real issues and challenges are for commercialising and scaling SAF production, look no further.
Every week we will be hearing from senior industry leaders who are actively shaping the future of SAF and aviation.
Hosted by Oscar Henderson and brought to you by the team at SAF Investor. Connect with us at www.safinvestor.com
The SAF Podcast
The SAF Podcast: Gidara Energy - SAF Technology For Your Eyes Only
Ever wondered what MI6 was evaluating after World War II that could help solve our aviation climate crisis today? The answer lies in a century-old technology that's experiencing a remarkable revival.
Peter-Paul Langerak of Gidara Energy joins us this week to take us through the evolution of High Temperature Winkler (HTW) gasification technology – from its 1920s origins through its refinement during WWII to its commercial deployment in the 1990s producing biomethanol from waste. Now owned by Gidara Energy, this technology offers a proven solution for converting municipal waste, biomass, and agricultural residues into clean syngas that can become sustainable aviation fuel.
What sets this approach apart is its commercial readiness. While much attention focuses on early-stage technologies, HTW gasification has already operated at scale, processing 500-1,000 tons of waste daily into valuable products. This sweet spot balances economic viability with practical feedstock logistics – smaller plants struggle financially while larger ones face insurmountable waste collection challenges.
Peter-Paul discusses the challenges of scaling projects, particularly feedstock logistics, permitting, and financing, and highlights how Gidara works with project developers and investors to bring projects from concept to final investment decision (FID).
The conversation shifts to Gidara's strategic pivot toward technology licensing, driven by urgent market demand for alternative SAF pathways as HVO/HEFA production approaches feedstock limitations by 2030. This urgency catalyzed the formation of the SAF Technology Alliance – a groundbreaking partnership between Gidara Energy, Samsung E&A, Johnson Matthey, and UOP Honeywell offering integrated, turnkey solutions from waste to wing.
Listen to the end to find out what Peter-Paul considers to be the biggest industry misconceptions when it comes to SAF technology licensing.
Ready to connect with the innovators and investors making sustainable aviation a reality? Join us September 23rd in New York for an exclusive industry gathering where you'll meet the people and technologies driving us toward our 2050 targets. Find out more here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0mv63z0
Just back from your summer breaks and have been listening to the SAF podcast intently. Join us for a more formal setting on September 23rd, where you can connect with like-minded people in the SAF industry and meet those that will have a tangible impact on hitting 2050 targets. To book now or to get more information, click the podcast link below.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to another episode of the SAF podcast, and this week it's great to be joined by Peter-Paul Langerak from Gidara Energy, and Gidara Energy are a technology licensor. Energy are a technology licensor. They have a specific technology they license in the SAF space and in other spaces that Peter Paul will be able to explain in much better detail than I ever will. So I'll hand over to Peter Paul. Peter Paul, how are you? Thanks very much for joining us.
Speaker 3:Peter Paul. Peter Paul, how are you? Thanks very much for joining us, hi, oscar. Yeah, thank you very much for this invitation to contribute to your podcast and looking forward for this hour of conversation about gasification with you, perfect.
Speaker 2:Well, it's great. It's great to have you and, before we get into the nuts and bolts of the technology that you guys have, if you just want to explain to everyone, give them a sense of your background and also a bit about gedara energy and how, what the story is of how you came up to sort of ending up licensing this high temper, high temperature winkler technology, which I certainly have never heard of, um, and I'm sure many others haven't, but it's quite an interesting story from when the technology was developed through to sort of the current day. So give everyone sort of an understanding of that yeah sure, so yeah the.
Speaker 3:Actually the history of the acw gasification technology is much more intriguing than my history.
Speaker 3:But uh I'll give you a flavor of that. Um, I've been active as a chemist. I graduated chemist. I've been active in specialty chemistry industry industries for for about more than 20 years, serving the coatings industry, in the oil refining industry. So, um, yeah, plenty of miles on the clock.
Speaker 3:Um, and then, uh, yeah, early last year I came across jidara and it's like, okay, what, what type of company is this and what are they achieving to do? And it really aligned with, uh, with what I wanted to do, which is, uh, yeah, serve the world with a technology that it desperately, desperately needs, which was actually the acw gasification technology. And when you look at that technology, uh, it's, uh, it's an intriguing technology. There's a lot of documentation on it. It's about 100 years old, so it goes back to the early 20th century when dr henry wrinkler invented a fluidized bed concept, built a couple of units and it actually got updated during the second world war. And after that, uh, yeah, plenty of units part 70 units got built to produce methanol and ammonia. But it really got interesting actually in the 70s and 80s when RWE and the German government started investing in it and started to look at the technology to produce advanced methanol and ammonia and actually started up units in the late 80s and 90s at commercial scale to produce biomethanol and ammonia as well, but particularly the biomethanol part.
Speaker 3:Yeah, gave a lot of challenges, of course, challenges that we also see today in producing these molecules at scale from a, let's say, not very typical feedstock, which is municipal waste and biomass.
Speaker 3:But they bought on the technology in those days. So they invested about 10 years and, let's say, 500 million Deutschmark in the day, which is about a billion dollars in today's money, to arrive at the position that the technology was ready to produce molecules from municipal waste. So, yeah, that's the background of the technology and through the decades technology got improved from an operational perspective in the sense that it's pressurized now and the benefits of pressurization is that you can increase the load without a lot of impact on your capex. And, yeah, it allows you to operate in a variety of feedstocks which is not your typical feedstock being biomass, being wood, being agricultural waste, being municipal waste. So that's the background of the technology and it's a well-proven, deep-bolted technology that back in the day, in the 90s, was a little bit too early to market it, and now the market in the world is really there to make use of this technology. So that's why I joined, that's why I'm working with this team, and it's a great journey so far.
Speaker 2:And Jadara Energy got the technology, the rights to the technology, in 2018. Is that right?
Speaker 3:Yes, so they obtained the technology from ThyssenKrupp Ude in 2019. And the technology was actually when GI Dynamics, which was the old name of the company, got acquired by Ara Partners, which is a private equity company in the United States, fully focused on how to decarbonize, how to abate industries, and their portfolio is all geared towards decarbonization. That fits in nicely. And the technology was obtained from ThyssenKrupp Ude in 2019, indeed, and it's now fully owned, including the history and all the operational data and all the learnings from the 90s, and that's all ownership of Chidara these days.
Speaker 2:And when Chidara got ownership of it it did all the literature and history that all that man, all those manuscripts and books around the technology did that come over as well. So you've got a massive library of of technology. It's in your amsterdam office now.
Speaker 3:It's not really the amsterdam office, it's somewhere stored but it's uh, yeah, it's a massive file, a lot of paper which we're looking to digitalize. But yeah, I mean, maybe a nice, uh nice story to tell is that we found a letter from mi6, and you're coming from the uk will appeal to it um where they after the world's war ii they did an evaluation of the technology whether it was any good.
Speaker 3:So we really have a classified MI6 file in the document or in the whole, let's say, paper file that we got from St Croop in those days. So I'm telling you this. It's very exhaustive, Everything is there and it got debaltoned and developed by the Germans in the 90s. So you can imagine to every little detail that is in those files.
Speaker 2:And I'm guessing there's no mention of the UK's favorite film, spy, in that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I haven't seen that.
Speaker 2:That sort of thing you find James Bond being involved with. Yeah well, you never know. You never know, Maybe that's the next film they're going to work on exactly so we've had a very interesting history lesson about the technology. What? What is the technology itself like? How did it? How does it work?
Speaker 3:so the technology takes a variety of feedstocks, which I said can be RDF, which is Refused Derived Fuel from MSW. It can take biomass, it can take agricultural waste, sewage sludge. We put that in a pellet form in order to feed it to the gasifier. And we need it in a pellet form because it's free-flowing and it enables us to let the feedstock enter the gasifier in a pressurized condition. The typical pressure the unit operates is 15 bar and then it enters into a fluidized bed.
Speaker 3:So the gasifier basically has two zones the fluidized bed, um, and the possible we call the freeboard. In the freeboard, um, there's a removal of heavy tars etc. And then when it exits the gasifier it goes through a cyclone to separate the uh, the heavy particles, and then it gets to a, a cooler where we cool down the syngas and where the heavy metals agglomerate on the dust particles that are still in there. And then we have, after cleaning, there's, a wash and a scrubber and a filter to remove the finest particles. So you end up with a tar-free, chlorine-free, dust-free syngas at the outlet.
Speaker 2:So that's in a nutshell how it works and on what scale are you sort of looking at licensing it, in terms of how much feedstock, what sort of product you're looking to produce, uh sort of any one time?
Speaker 3:yeah. So we have two, two flavors in terms of scale. So it's a 500 ton per day intake and a thousand ton per day per day intake. And the reason we take those uh numbers is that they're very nicely aligned with the units that ran in the late 90s. So it's a proven TRL 8 maturity at this point in time and we're going to stick to those numbers. And why are we sticking to those numbers? First of all because we don't want to deviate too much from the proven concept that was running in those days. But also it's exactly in the sweet spot of what the industry needs.
Speaker 3:So if you look at what makes projects go, if you're under 500 tons, you're really running into economical problems and get your IRR where it needs to be to make a project go, to make a project go. And if you're above, say, 2,000 for municipal waste and 3,000 for biomass, you're running into large logistical issues on your feedstock. And sometimes we see that underestimated by particularly project developers. It's the feedstock. Logistics and the composition of your feedstock is very important for your project in order to make it robust and working. So it's not only the composition, it's also the logistics, it's everything that you need to do in order to get your feedstock into your gasifier.
Speaker 3:So from that perspective, we slay it in 2000,000, 3,000 ton max. It's really what we're looking at. Also, when you make it bigger, I mean, obviously your capex grows and your project is likely too large to fund. So that's what we're seeing as well. So when you look at our capacities 500 and 1,000 tons we're serving that sweet spot between 500 and, let's say, 2000 in various trains where you can say, okay, you can build three trains of 500 times, you can build two trays of a thousand ton, depending on what you want to do, what your capex is and what your operational reliability wishes are is that feedstock logistics side.
Speaker 2:The biggest sort of challenge that you sort of see as the licensor when you're sort of going into working on projects that sort of can be the most time consuming and actually sort of working out the timescale, the planning of actually developing these projects of actually developing these projects.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's an element that sometimes really gets underestimated, particularly when I look at municipal waste going to RDS, the sorting of the municipal waste. Everything can be in there. You need to be consistent, but waste never is right. So you really have to develop. Okay, what kind of chemical specs do I need to stick to in order to make a gas fire work in a stable condition? And you can imagine, if you look at 1,500 to 2,000 tons of waste a day coming in to your facility, I mean that's a huge undertaking. That's a huge undertaking. That's a lot of ways that you have to manage right. So also in our team you have an SME who has a long career in one of the biggest race-handling companies in the Netherlands, who is really helping us there and also helping our customers to realize that you cannot underestimate this right, because if you don't invest enough in that content integration, then you have huge risks in your operability of the unit. So that's something we, very early in the process, when we engage with customers, put a lot of emphasis on.
Speaker 2:And are you purely focused on your HTW, the high temperature Winkler technology, because there are a lot of technology providers that are licensing it different. They have different technologies that they go out and sort of license to sort of different customers and then they say, okay, you can license this technology, depending on the availability of the feedstock wherever you want to produce. Are you guys solely focused on this one technology or are you looking at sort of other technologies to sort of license alongside this technology?
Speaker 3:No, at this moment we are the owner of the HEW gasification technology, so that is the license we sell.
Speaker 3:But if you look at that island and the battery limits, we started out as, okay, the battery limit is really at the pallet, pallet in and then what we call raw single gas out, which I just described, um. But we're looking to expand a little bit the battery limits, um, and to investigate with partners who are really equipped in that territory, saying, okay, as a turnkey, we can look at the feedstock preparation and participate in that. So stretching a little bit to the front end, but also at the back end saying, okay, really, the purification, the syngas in the south, uh context, saying, okay, the syngas needs to be very pure and expand that battery limit as well with partners that we're uh, we're looking around us. So if you, if you're saying, look at technologies and market those maybe as a sub license or etc. That we want to expand on, it would be very closely in conjunction with, I guess, ferry Island in that sense. So it would be feedstock preparation and gas cleaning.
Speaker 2:But at this moment we're 100% focused and our highest priority has to license the ACw gamification technology one of the really interesting things about jidara is that there was a strategy to go into sort of operate the build the build own and operate model of facilities and refine syngas and products yourself. But you pivoted and looked more into the licensing trajectory in the licensing business. What prompted that transition? But for you guys, and what? Why is that a better fit than the build-own-operate model that other people are doing?
Speaker 3:Well, it's not completely a pivot. I would rather say it's a very important new pillar of the company. The reason we opened it up and we started licensing is because we saw the world around us needed the technology. It's pure market demand that we say, okay, if you look at SAF particularly and you zoom into that, then the requirements for SAF until 2030 are basically met through the HVO and HEFA production. If you look beyond 2030 and the mandates that are going to kick in, then there's just not enough feedstock in order to meet those requirements. And if you look at then okay, when do we need to start building alternative soft production facilities, which is basically tomorrow, in order to meet the regulation and the mandates that are kicking in in 2030. Also, what we see around us we see the struggles with gasification and we are sitting particularly on different solid feedstocks. We are sitting on a technology that did it in the 90s. It was integrated, it produced molecules. So that's why we opened up to the market and said we need to make this technology available beyond GDAR itself in order to help the world progress for soft, for biomethanol, for renewable natural gas, for anything hydrogen. So I mean those are all the end markets we're now active in, so we're doing this for one and a half year. We have a very healthy pipeline of projects that we're now active in, so we're doing this for one and a half year, and we have a very healthy pipeline of projects that we're now investing in and participating with project developers and fellowship players in order to meet that demand. So that's one market demand.
Speaker 3:Second is we went through this experience with Advanced Methyl Amsterdam. We completed the feed. We know what needs to be done. We saw basically all the challenges that came with it in order to do it. So we lived through it. We have the permit in place. So that's also delivering value to customers, Like what do you need to do to get your project permitted, particularly in Europe? Because that's not an easy task, I can tell you. Particularly in Europe, because that's not an easy task, I can tell you. So we're helping both the world and project developers who are looking into this space. Plus, we're also learning and operating to help our own project and the company itself as a whole.
Speaker 2:And on that transition and the addition of this licensing pillar, how has the overall strategy and the long-term strategy of the company changed and developed and sort of morphed over the time, as you're sort of bedding into the licensing side of the business?
Speaker 3:Yeah, obviously. I mean, I'm the commercial guy, so I'm focused more on the licensing business and the outside world and building a healthy business there. So that's my first and foremost priority. At the same time, obviously, we want to build a revenue stream as well with facilities that operate on ACW gasification technology. So there's two there's multiple flavors here that we want to build a company on. So there's a stable, stable revenue generation from facilities that we own. Plus there's a stable revenue stream licensing the technology to project developers and balance sheet players in order to meet the real demand for biofuels and biochemicals.
Speaker 2:You mentioned some of the other markets you were involved with through your advanced methanol yeah facility in amsterdam. How do you balance that versus you know, saf? How are you balancing the demands on your technology and all the different applications that could be used in different end products? So how do you go about managing and sort of working within those parameters?
Speaker 3:yeah, we're not so much binding ourselves to an end market. How we look at it is okay. There needs to be a healthy end market that is progressive and that has a healthy demand for a typical molecule product. So if you look at those end markets which I mentioned, they're soft clearly. I mean, uh, talking to you as a SAF investor podcast you know all about-.
Speaker 2:You don't have to say SAF's the favorite. Just because you're here you can say other ones are better. It's fine, I didn't say that.
Speaker 3:But we don't discriminate versus methanol, for instance, where methanol obviously is an established market. It's a huge market worldwide. There are several. Methanol in that sense is a huge market worldwide. There are several. Methyl in that sense is a very nice molecule. You can use it for elephants, you can use it for fuel in the marine world, you can use it for plastics in that sense. So I mean there's a lot of opportunity in the methyl market with a very established market as well. So we don't discriminate between the two. We just look at it as like okay, which project is credible, which project has the best and fastest route to an operating plant and which partner are we working with at this point in time? And obviously there's renewable natural gas and hydrogen as well.
Speaker 2:um, but the um, yeah, what we, the majority of our hoppers, is either in biomethanol or self at this point in time and when you look at the potentially licensing your technology with with partners, what are sort of the criteria, the the critical aspects that you look at to work out whether this is going to be a good project for the application of this technology, whether the the companies sort of align together in their strategies and how they want to go about developing these projects? Do you have sort of a not necessarily a checklist, but sort of some key indicators that you look for to work out if this is going to be a fruitful partnership?
Speaker 3:sure, um, that's uh, yeah, we started looking at europe and the united states because you know those are close to home markets that we all know very well. Um, we migrated towards. Okay, I don't really care where the project sits or where the project developer or project owner lives. We're looking at, okay, what is the situation on your lot? What does your land look like? Does it have access to utilities? Is it a green or a brown field? What's your OSBL situation? So those are all very much key indicators.
Speaker 3:Then the scale of it. We talked about scale, right, uh, how much feedstock do you have available? Is it secured and in what condition do you have your feedstock? Uh, arriving at your site? So that's a very, very relevant question. Uh, also, kind of, the gauge is like it. Does this project developer or project owner know, uh, what he or she gets himself into from a feedstock perspective?
Speaker 3:Then you look at permitting. What is the permitting situation? Where is this based? How is what's the business case? So, how are you making your money? Is it, you know, from this way, is getting the gate fee or we have a healthy offtake. So that needs to be in place. And then, obviously, the last, and very much at this point in time. The most important one how you get, are you funded right, so it's where your investors? Is your divx already secured from a funding perspective? Um, what your fid situation looked like. How you're going to raise your capex? Um, normally we don't get a lot of clarity on that in the early stages, but very quickly we equipped ourselves to say, okay, this really has credibility to go somewhere, or it's going to be a challenge from a funding perspective. So those are the typical if you want to call it, checklist items that we look at and it's like okay, we're engaging, yes or no.
Speaker 2:When people engage with you, it's usually early on in the process. You've got to get your technology lined up before you can look at doing fundraising or getting investment to get through to FID, so you're already involved at the time when these vast amounts of of capex are looking to be raised. How involved do you guys get as the licenses in in helping with with that process? Because obviously it's critical for you guys to get projects that are financed and operational and at commercial scale and you don't want to be licensing with lots of people that get stuck at fid. So do you help with that? Or do you think you know we're providing a technology at a trl level, that's, you know, bankable for for you know, investors, so you know that's us doing our piece? How do you look at the investment side of these projects?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we make our due diligence, of course, and it depends on the party who is developing the project how much they want us engaged so we can go up to meeting with banks and investors in order to increase the credibility of the technology that we bring um.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, we can provide documents, we can provide support, we can provide basically anything to convince an investor, uh, that this is really a credible project. The the challenge is you have to do it from start to end. Right, the gasifier alone is not enough. You need okay, there's feedstock. Ultimately, there's a molecule at the very end, be it sulfur, be it methanol or any of the sort, so you don't only need the gasifier. So we do the gasifier part, we provide support and documents backed up by data, and we can go as far as the investor requires us to do so, or the project developer to help with that and increase the credibility of the technology. But at the end of the day, I mean it's a full, integrated lineup that needs to be attractive, including a business case that discards much broader than the gas fire itself.
Speaker 2:Is it at that point that you get the MI6 letter out and go look what MI6 thought in the 90s?
Speaker 3:I don't know whether that helps. That's too long ago. Certainly a lot of data from the 90s, yeah, because that's when the technology got really mature.
Speaker 2:And you mentioned there that you're one part in a chain. There are lots of different links that are required to be in place and all of them need to be bankable and connected and aligned in order to make a project feasible. From your guys perspectives. What are the key relationships sort of within, sort of the industry that you guys need to sort of look after, nurture and and build to sort of one help you develop, but to make sure that you know the industry scales, the projects get online and that we're making progress, as opposed to sort of just being being stagnant and not developing anything yeah, well, when you look at, I mean, zoom out and say, look what, what brings projects to fid and what makes projects go is obviously very much the funding part.
Speaker 3:And in order to do that and get the funds, I mean you need to convince a lot of people, right, and you see these alliances and conglomerates in aviation, you see them in maritime, you see them in technology, etc. In order to get these projects going. Let's be honest, from an investor perspective, there are so many flavors and so many options in order to invest in, particularly with higher rrs, irs, but at the same time, the world needs to decarbonize, right? So it needs a I don't want to call it a leap of faith, but it needs some courage in order to, you know, put your money in projects like this. So, if you look at it, where the most critical relationships in the industry is, let the industry know that there is a mature pathway, there is a mature technology that is secure, that is integrated. I'm taking a leap forward to the Soft Technology Alliance we're going to talk about it in a minute, I'm sure In order to bring that to the market, in order to convince these investors and also regulators to help this forward and actually help projects to FID and beyond, projects to FID and beyond. So the financers and the customers, be it project developers and Velocity players, we need to go on with these projects and we do whatever we can to help moving these projects along and get them past FID. Then, obviously, the technology partners that we look at are a very clear target for us as well, because what we talked about the gas fire is the gas fire. It produces syngas.
Speaker 3:But what then? So what helps projects along massively is pre-integration with downstream and upstream technologies. That's where we're heavily investing in. That's what we did when we started the licensing business. We immediately went out and engaged with other technology licensors, downstream of the gasifier particularly.
Speaker 3:It's like how do we get to salt, how do we get to methanol, how do we get to renewable natural gas and can we start pre-integrating natural gas? And can we start pre-integrating, because then your value proposition to the market becomes all of a sudden much more appealing. Right, and some were open to that, some were a little bit. It was like, okay, we do this on our own and that's all fine, but we found a good set of downstream technology partners that are really willing to start integrating and bring this to the market. So we have a already feedstock to product value proposition and I think those those kind of relationships, as you mentioned it are, are key in order to to be successful do you think there's enough understanding across the industry of the options available, the technology, the TRL levels that they're sitting at to foster these relationships?
Speaker 2:Or do you think we're still at the stage where there's a lot of education, there's a lot of reaching out to potential partners, going and explaining the sort of nuts and bolts of the options, the opportunities that are on the table? Or have we sort of slightly moved past that now and there is this sort of understanding and we're actually just really trying to forge strong partnerships and agreements that are tangible and can actually make a difference going forward?
Speaker 3:Yeah, if you go to congresses and conferences, the awareness is increasing to build these strong partnerships, particularly in a field where you're at the frontier of something new. So we are very new, a very fresh and new company with an old technology, but it's groundbreaking for today's world. So we're really used to that. And obviously our technology partners around us are around for a much longer time and they're seeing the opportunity. But they also have to step across their own boundaries, like we really need to reach out and we need to work together in order to make this happen.
Speaker 3:And if you look at it from a technology perspective, what you see the regulators and basically the investment funds from governments look at is TRL and six and under technologies. It's like, okay, really investing in new R&D, new innovations, rather than investing in projects that are now active and are going to give us plans that produce, for instance, soft in early 2030s. So in that sense, it's then some education needs to be done. It's like, hey, the technology is already here, right? You don't have to put your money in a TRL 4 or 5 technology and then have it ready in 10 years' time. That's too late, right? So that awareness still needs to come. And, like we said on the investor side. And like we said on the investor side, it needs the right project with the right credibility in order to make it, and whoever that project is is going to be the first to market and it's going to be the uh. Everything will gravitate around that. So in, in in that sense. Um it if nate's. It needs an investor with some guts.
Speaker 2:Let's put it like that but it needs to also be the right fit, because not every project is going to be the right fit to every investor. So just going to the investment community, and widely, is not necessarily a strategy that's going to work, because there are risk profiles and regions and areas and different nuances that suit different, different partners. So it's doing the due diligence to actually work out where the, the understanding works best.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I mean, we're not even that right. So, uh, we're all on a bill to build plants, but you also also want to build. We want to have our customers to be able to build money and and durable and sustainable.
Speaker 2:So it goes hand in hand absolutely man, you mentioned it before about the um, the saff technology alliance. That um you guys are part of and we've spoken about it in an earlier episode with um richard bathers from honeywell, who are also involved, and so for those that haven't potentially listened to that episode, do you want to give us a very brief overview about what the saff technology alliance is, what its aim, what it's aiming to achieve for the, for the industry, and also why it's really good strategically from a jadara point of view, for sort of taking the next steps?
Speaker 3:yes, absolutely so. It basically serves all of the above we discussed. So the soft technology alliance is an alliance of four companies, being jadara Energy, Samsung E&A as an EPC, Johnson, Matthey FT and UOP Honeywell.
Speaker 2:Funny because when I spoke to Richard, he put Honeywell first and you put Jidara first, Of course.
Speaker 3:But it's an alliance of equals where everybody brings their value. Of course, but it's, um, it's. It's an alliance of equals where everybody brings their value, of course. So and um, if you listen to the episode with Jim Stoncyfer, one of the key learnings of the Fulcrum is the duty engineering right. So don't cut corners. Select the right partners and that's basically what we do. And especially, you need to work with the right partners, and dollars matter most, right? So, and that's in the execution part of it. So how this came together is, like I said, we reached out to technology partners in order to go beyond the gasifier and really deliver an integrated turnkey solution, feedstock to product.
Speaker 3:In this case, saf and Samsung E&A catalyzed this whole effort in the sense that, okay, when you do this, when you have this technology stack and you have it integrated amongst yourselves, you debalton act, all those critical battery limit challenges. Then we are willing to come in and pick this project up and put a guarantee from start to finish right, backed up by the technology licenses, of course, um, and that is really something very unique. So you have a, you have an integrated lineup, you have an epc company already knows what they're getting the cells into. Uh and um, you have, you know, all those four parties in one shot, because what you don't want to do as a developer is okay, now I have to go out. I have all these other challenges on land, on investors, on feedstock, on offtake, all of that. What you don't have to do anymore now is go out there with a competitive bid for gasifier technologies and negotiate that. Then you have to go out. Okay, fissure drops. Then you have to go out your upgrading unit. Then you have to go out and select an EPC company. So all of that is now available in a package, in a value proposition, and obviously you're not in a competitive situation. So you have to be comfortable with that as a project developer.
Speaker 3:But at the same time, if you sign up day one and you commit yourself we already did all the pre-work the whole lineup is integrated and it can easily, in our estimation, save you almost a year that you can start up the unit at the backend, that you can start up the unit at the backend, right. So that's a massive upside versus your traditional approach in building a facility like this. So, yeah, that's the true value proposition, plus all the challenges that you have with your integration. And, referring to Jim StoneCypher, it's like it'll be underestimated, because what we sometimes see in the market is okay, by lack of funds, let's skip the let's call it fell to engineering stage and go straight to basic engineering, and then you're starting to get yourself into a cutting corner mode. That is really detrimental to your later success, right, but if you're working with this alliance that gives you the turnkey, you already win a lot of time on the front end. That is going to give you payback at the very end you mentioned epc.
Speaker 2:So that's engineering, procurement and construction, and I think a lot of people who are sort of new or newer to the sort of industry or trying to sort of work out what's going on would think you know what isn't that we? You know what you guys do. Isn't that something that you should do as a licensor? You should. You know you're the engineering guys, you should do that. But there's a separate entity that does the epc aspect of it. Can you just sort of give people an overview about what that is, why that's an important sort of aspect and how that sort of works and sort of ties in? Because you will form partnerships. So you've got a partnership with black and beach and it's separate to the alliance, but they just do EPC, they're the engineering, procurement and construction. So can you just sort of help people understand how that sort of relationship, balance, nuance works?
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course, and I was kind of puzzled where you were going with this question.
Speaker 2:but I understand you got there in the end. You're not the only one that are sometimes puzzled with my questions, don't worry, fair enough.
Speaker 3:So I mean none of these corporations are exclusive. So we all operate in a very free way, including our partners in the Soft Technology Alliance. So in order to address your questions like, how do you navigate the various players in the market, how do you navigate customer demands? We're open to work with anyone, right? And I think you're referring to a memorandum of understanding we have at Black Veatch, which is indeed a corporation that we look at engineering parts, and Black Veatch helps us sometimes with peak shaving engineering hours. Engineering demand that comes in, particularly when we do the front-end engineering, including the basic engineering packages we do ourselves in-house. But sometimes peak demand is such that we need to kind of shave that off. And we're working with Black Veatch and they're very comfortable with our technology. They're very uncomfortable with our people. So that's how that works and we have several other engagements like that across the globe and that's also what you need. I mean we're not the biggest outfit, so that just solidifies our operation and we can still serve what our customer demand is.
Speaker 3:So when you look at soft technology in line, it's like, okay, why is it not exclusive? Then I mean, the value is in the value proposition, right? So the market will respond to what we have to offer and the offering is very appealing, as I just explained. So it's just we don't need this exclusivity. We go to market with a very appealing customer value proposition, with something that is gaining you a lot of time and saving you a lot of money, and if that's not appealing for you, then this alliance is not for you. It's simple as that. So the market will answer whether this is interesting, yes or no, but we believe it's a game changer because it will save you a lot of hassle.
Speaker 2:When we spoke to Richard it was a week or so after the announcement was made, so it was still very fresh at that point, but now we're sort of a few months afterwards. What's the sort of general sort of response been? Since it's been launched? Has there been lots of interest in in sort of utilizing this, this partnership, people wanting to engage?
Speaker 3:yes, definitely. So we have a healthy inbound of requests, um, and we can separate them basically to projects that were already going and had a couple of partners selected and now I'll look into okay, is it interesting enough to make a switch, um, and others who are really at day one. That's like okay, can you explain this? And and you know, I have this project going, has this and that in place and let's start working together. So there's a healthy inbound of requests and you know we can basically answer based on what I said. Our value proposition is strong. We can say, okay, here's your one-stop show. You're from number one negotiator in front of you representing the alliance. So one channel of information. So, yeah, it's been received well so far, but it's still early days. You know these projects have a very long time of maturity towards, let's call it, fid. So it's a lot of conversations across the world in order to make fast progress.
Speaker 2:And is there the sort of situation where if someone's working with, say yourselves, or already working with Honeywell or one of the partners in the alliance, that you could just bring sort of the other three on through the Alliance to sort of streamline all that whole process for people. So you can sort of just go into existing projects with exit somewhere someone's already affiliated and then sort of plug and play that way as well If you know the interest and there was, you know the right alignment and you know ideals behind it yeah, how our works is that when somebody knocks on our door, we basically have an uh, a due diligence and say look, okay, but who are you, who are we?
Speaker 3:um, at that point in time you're working with the four parties and if you decide to proceed, then one of the parties will be the front to the customer. Doesn't mean the others disappear, I mean they're still there, particularly when it goes more deeply into technical discussions. But there will be one person accountable for that particular lead, who is going to be your contact person representing the four companies so I've got one final question and we've had a really interesting conversation and a lot of it has been.
Speaker 2:We've done the technology and then we've done the the other sort of aspects that come into technology licensing. But I wanted to end on asking you what you think's the biggest misconception that everyone has around technology licenses. Is it that they should show up to people's offices wearing a lab coat and safety goggles, um, when actually they wear very fashionable shirts, like like you are now, or are there other things that you know? Do you want to put the record straight on the to correct people's understanding of what a technology licensor is?
Speaker 3:yeah, the um. Well, the technology license speak for itself. We license technology that people can make money off, right, so that's very simple. But the biggest misconception is that we have a long way to go before the technology is available in order to make renewable fuels and chemicals. That is the biggest misconception. The technology is here, it's ready to go, and that's what I would like to leave it with. I mean, we don't need to lose time on developing new technologies. Obviously, the world needs to develop new technology and continue to innovate, but the urgency that we say, that we see in terms of particularly soft uh, that urgency can be addressed with, uh, the current available technologies. And I mean the tech is here and we need to move fast. So that's what my tagline would be so you heard it here first.
Speaker 2:The technology's here, it's ready to go, so everyone should get on board and get get things moving as fast as they need to to meet 2030 targets and and beyond. Peter Paul, thanks so much for your time and for explaining everything about judara, the staff technology alliance, and giving us a fantastic history lesson about your technology as well.
Speaker 3:It was um fascinating having you on my pleasure, oscar, and uh very enjoyed the conversation. Thank you. My pleasure, oscar, and uh very enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.