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ZEOTECH LTD (ZEO) - From Mine to Climate Solution: How Zeotech is Transforming Construction and Environmental Remediation

• Andrew Musgrave

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Fascinating breakthroughs in sustainable construction and climate technology take centre stage as James Marsh, CEO of Zeotech Limited, unveils the company's game-changing innovations. The conversation explores how Zeotech's AusPozz™ product is redefining possibilities in low-carbon concrete, with commercial demonstrations confirming its ability to replace up to 40% of cement while delivering superior strength and dramatically reduced shrinkage.

What makes this technology truly revolutionary is its versatility and comprehensive performance profile. Beyond simple cement replacement, AusPozz™ outperforms expensive additives like silica fume while eliminating the need for various chemical additives that typically address concrete issues like cracking and bleeding. This exceptional value proposition has attracted partnerships with construction giants including Holcim, with strategic agreements positioning Zeotech for seaborne distribution to Sydney and Melbourne concrete markets, as well as global opportunities through Gladstone Ports Corporation's deepwater facilities.

The conversation takes an exciting turn as Marsh details their second horizon: zeolite-based methane remediation technology showing 70-85% efficiency in capturing this potent greenhouse gas. With their pre-feasibility study nearing completion and their current resource representing just 5% of available exploration area, Zeotech stands at the threshold of significant growth. Dive into this episode to discover how Australian innovation is tackling two of our most pressing environmental challenges – carbon-intensive construction and methane emissions – with solutions that don't just match industry standards but dramatically exceed them. Ready to understand the future of sustainable materials? Listen now and gain insights into technology that leading industry experts are calling "a genuine game-changer."

Andrew Musgrave Host

Welcome to another episode of ASX Briefs, where we connect with the leaders shaping the future of Australia's most exciting companies, and today we're joined by James Marsh, the Chief Executive Officer of Zeotech Limited, an emerging mineral processing technology company that's making significant waves in sustainability and advanced material space. 
 James, thanks for joining me today and welcome to the ASX Briefs podcast. 

James Marsh Guest

My pleasure Andrew. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Now, James, for listeners that may be unfamiliar with Zeotech, can you just provide a brief overview of the company? 

James Marsh Guest

Yep. So Zeotech, in a nutshell, is an integrated industrial kaolin and mineral processing technology company and we are leveraging our wholly owned high-grade kaolin resource to produce minerals for construction, greenhouse gas remediation and also especially focused on low-carbon concrete. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Now, James, there's a lot happening and AusPozz™ is proving to be a game changer in low carbon concrete, so can you walk us through the key performance highlights from the recent independent trials and what this means for the broader industry adoption? 

James Marsh Guest

Yeah, certainly. So, we have done a huge amount of work. We've actually been working behind the scenes for over six months on optimizing the use of our AusPozz™ product in concrete. So, we had a big head start and over the last week or so we've been releasing a whole series of results which show that what AusPozz™ is demonstrating is it's not just a very effective product for decarbonizing concrete In fact, any building products with cement in but it's also looks like it's offering a total solution. 

So, it's giving a whole range of performance benefits, along with the very significant decarbonization ability, which means it puts in a sort of category of its own, because there are ways to decarbonize construction products, but usually you have to sacrifice some sort of performance aspect. But the results we put out last week and the week before they clearly show that we have strengths, way beyond what you'd normally expect for a similar sort of product. So, it means that we're really getting a lot of attention now around what we're doing because as quoted to quote a life member of the concrete industry. He said this really is a game changer for the industry. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

And you've mentioned that AusPozz™ has the potential to replace cement and even highly priced silica fume, giving much higher strength and significantly reduced shrinkage. So how are these features being received by potential customers and industry partners? 

James Marsh Guest

Yeah, very well received indeed. So, we last week we did a first commercial scale demonstration and we released news about that today where we invited a large number of leading engineers from around Queensland to come and see what could be achieved by using our AusPozz™. What we found is it can replace cement and we in fact, in that experiment, that commercial trial, we replaced 40% of a general purpose cement, which is a very high replacement level. But that has led to even more, increased, levels of replacement. We're now looking at 50% and 60% replacement, because what we found was that even at that sort of level of replacement, we're getting far superior strength and much lower shrinkage, which is also a very desirable property. So what we did in addition to that, we looked at silica fume. Silica fume, for example, is a very expensive additive. It's 20,000 tons 20,000 or 30,000 tons of that used in concrete around Australia alone to give high performance in concrete. But it's very hard to use. People don't like using it, but they have to. Well, we actually replaced that one for one with our AusPozz™ and we got better performance. So, we have a very user-friendly version of silica fume. So that's one very high-value application. What these engineers were saying at the demonstration was that using AusPozz™ means that they can eliminate all sorts of expensive other additives that they have to use to solve problems. There are problems like shrinkage, cracking, curing issues, bleeding issues. Those things can all be removed by using AusPozz™. So, it has potential to not just replace cement and replace other mineral additives of higher cost, but it can also eliminate the use of all sorts of chemicals as well. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

And the MOU with Holcim Australia and the LOI with Gladstone Ports Corporation point to a strong strategic alignment. So how do these partnerships position the company for large-scale manufacturing and distribution? 

James Marsh Guest

Well, the Holcim MOU is very important because a lot of people may know that Holcim is the world's biggest producer supply of building products globally, so a huge outfit. They don't sign agreements with companies very often, and certainly not companies like us, so it just shows the level of interest they have in what we have. So, they are helping us to commercialize. The MOU means we work together very closely and this demonstration we did with a full load was at the concrete yard in Brisbane last week. So that was a just a step forward in the commercialization collaboration with them. So, we'll move forward with them and we'll take that forward to next stage will be a large scale trial and then leading to hopefully an off-take agreement with them. So that's very important for the commercialisation aspect. 

So, what we have with Gladstone Ports Corporation also very important because that gives us a very good site for our production. So, we plan to produce mine, our material, about 200 kilometers away from Gladstone Port sorry, away from Bundaberg Port. It'll be trucked to Bundaberg, down to where Gladstone Ports Corporation have a deep-water operation there on port. We'll produce material there and we better ship it around the whole world from there. It's also a state development site. So, we will get support from state development and it's an area that they really want to push more commercial development, more commercial operations. So we're getting support very strongly from the government and from Gladstone Ports Corporation. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

And with trials underway with other major industry players, such as Adbri and Heidelberg Materials. What are the key criteria you're focusing on to convert these into long-term commercial agreements? 

James Marsh Guest

Yeah, we are certainly getting a lot of interest from major cement concrete companies in Australia some you just mentioned there and also in fact globally. So, because the news gets out and it's spreading that we have something here that it's not just a replacement for cement, it's a. It's actually a league of its own when it comes to performance. So, it means that these companies have got samples, they're testing samples, they're also finding very good results. I can say without exception, the results are positive on all fronts. 

So, the plan is to get a very nice initial offtake, probably with Holcim, and that will give us a real strong foundation of the business. But then we can develop other opportunities with these other companies where we may have the opportunity to increase the margins and move into more higher value specialized type applications. So, the testing with these other companies is very important. It gives us leverage; it gives us opportunities. The total market opportunity just in Australia is somewhere around about three to four million tons a year of our product, which means that's way more than we can produce, but it means in that case, then we can look at how do we optimize that to make the most money from it. So, these opportunities are all progressing well and it all gives us more leverage on the commercial side. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

And Zeotech's methane reduction technology has shown a 70 to 85% efficiency in simulated trials. So, can you update us on the next steps, particularly your move towards on-site landfill trials? 

James Marsh Guest

Yeah, so this is what we call our Horizon 2 product. So, Horizon 1 is the AuspPozz™ metakaolin. That product we will sell, as we just heard, for interconcrete other construction products. But that material is also a feed for our zeolite production. So, Horizon 2 will be to use a certain proportion of our metakaolin production to feed into the zeolite production.  

So far, we have got exceptionally good results in these university-scale landfill trials. Our plan now is to move to full-scale field trial, which means we need quite a large amount of zeolite. So, we've just in the process of increasing our pilot plant production in the Brisbane pilot plant. The plan is to produce enough of that to do at least one, possibly more, field trials with a partner. At the moment we are talking to three potential major partners, so we just need one of them to come on board and then we will move into a full-scale field trial and then that will lead us to ideally to another commercial partner where we can develop that Horizon 2 opportunity. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

And with $2.5 million in cash at the end of the last quarter and recent R&D funding secured, how well positioned is Zeotech to deliver on its near-term milestones. 

James Marsh Guest

Near-term. We will complete our pre-feasibility study before the end of first half this year. So not long to wait now. That's the end of June, so we have enough money to take us through the pre-feasibility stage. Once we publish that and we can get some metrics out about our project, that gives the company a bit of a clearer picture of what the company evaluation is, what the company value is, then we'll look at the options for raising a bit more money to take us through the DFS stage. 

Now, at that stage we'll not only finish the pre-feasibility study but we're looking to lock in some offtake agreements. 

So, we should be in a very strong position then to get funding by a range of different strategies. We could go for debt funding or we could go for a raise. So, what we'll do is we'll choose the best option for the shareholders. But I think once the PFS is out and people see the true value of what we got here, then that will put us in a very strong position to get the funding. And then we can use that funding to take us through the DFS, through the financial investment decision, as soon as possible, but also to do some extensive drilling on our resource, because our resource now is about 14 million tonnes of feed material. It's quite clear that we can sell a lot more of that, so we want to expand that resource. That's based on only 5% of the land we own around the area and the land we have exploration rights on. So, we want to expand that resource as much as possible and that will happen after the feasibility study pre-feasibility study is released. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Now, finally, with Zeotech now playing in both construction and environmental remediation sectors, how do you see the company evolving over the next one to two years? 

James Marsh Guest

Yeah, so exciting time ahead. Here I mean short term. I can see that the metakaolin opportunity going into construction well, what we have here is quite clearly a very important, in fact vital, ingredient for the construction industry. So, we can see that someone who is a major player in the industry is going to be wanting to lock that in long term. So, we can see that there's some sort of strategic moves happening there, probably on the metakaolin front. That's why we're very keen to expand our resource and increase evaluation. And but then we can see that the second horizon product, the zeolite light which comes off the back of that well that's that involves mopping up lots of methane. So, there's another huge opportunity there, because it doesn't just solve the problem for the disposal companies, for local councils and so on. It means that there's another opportunity to capture the value of that methane, which is 28 times worse than carbon dioxide for the environment. So, it looks like Zeotech is moving towards, I'd say, a major player, certainly in Australia, on the climate mitigation technology front. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, James. Well, it's been great to chat today, so thanks for your time and we look forward to further updates from Zeotech in the upcoming months. 

James Marsh Guest

Yes, thank you very much, Andrew. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

That concludes this episode of ASX Briefs. Don't forget to subscribe and we look forward to catching you on our next episode.