Applied Graphene Materials plc (LON:AGM) Chief Executive Officer Adrian Potts caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the important new supply agreement in car care, what they offer to that sector and what it means for the company’s progress.
Q1: Applied Graphene Materials has just announced an important new supply agreement. Adrian, can you just tell us what it’s all about?
A1: It’s an important agreement for us with a truly global leader in the car detailing industry for an exclusively developed graphene-based dispersion additive solution so it’s a major milestone for us in the car care sector in that it’s with a much, much larger entity.
As you know, we’re active in the car care sector as part of our core market strategy for industrial protective coatings and previously we’ve already announced multiple product launches with other somewhat smaller participants in the car care sector so companies like EZ Car Care, Infinity Wax, Constellation Chemicals and so on. While we can’t reveal the name of this partner, they are the biggest one yet that we’ve engaged with in this sector, and they have over 80 years’ experience in producing award-winning products for the international car care sector.
Car care, generally, it’s a fast moving market and innovators in the space, they’re keen to exploit the differentiation that graphene can offer so we’ve seen growing interest from manufacturers in using graphene in cleaning products, in detailing products to protect services and improve vehicle aesthetics.
So, this new partnership reflects how AGM is able to do that and produce high quality, consistent graphene nanoplatelet dispersions at true industrial volumes.
Q2: What could AGM’s nanoplatelet dispersion offer the car care sector?
A2: So, I think the important question is, you’ve got a lovely car, what do you want for your car paint finish as a customer? Shine, water to bead off it and no deterioration over time from UV degradation, from corrosion, you want extended durability for that coating.
Adding our Genable graphene dispersions into car care systems, significantly improves the barrier performance of the various product types that are used in that sector so materials like waxes, sprayable detailing materials and polishes, specifically for vehicle paint. The graphene offers a barrier, which reinforces the coating to protect it from corrosion and from other damage over time so protecting it from corrosive species like chemicals in rain, in various parts of the world and then things like bird droppings that can be highly, deleterious to paint finishes. It also improves the beading and the sheeting properties so like water beading, coming off your paint more effectively, and then also enhanced UV absorption for the product so protecting the paint from damaging UV rays, and that is particularly a problem where we see a lot of paint chalking, for example, in different parts of the world.
So, combining different graphene’s that we have available in our product range really enables us to fit the application need and our nanoplatelet dispersion formatting gives us products that are safe to handle, and that can be stirred into new and existing coating systems to provide a range of performance enhancements that I’ve talked about and offers a wide scope for our customers to customize and improve their product range.
So, it’s a great product that really gives great flexibility to our customers and then to their customers in the products that they sell.
Q3: What does this latest agreement mean for Applied Graphene Materials’ progress as a company?
A3: So as far as I’m concerned, it’s a brilliant step in our commercialisation strategy. We’ve demonstrated that the technology works to many innovative companies in the sectors that we’re focused on and now I feel it’s time for some of those larger entities to come on board, to realise the performance attributes of the products that we have to offer that where we’ve already proven that that technology really works.
So it’s a really great addition to our growing list of customers. Of course, we’ve been working on this deal for a while, and it’s really exciting to be able to announce it at last and it’s the latest in a strong line of partnerships that we’ve been able to develop over this year. We previously announced distribution partnerships with Imkemex in India and Rayoung Chemtech in Taiwan and it demonstrates fundamentally the strength of our product offering by giving real world examples of the performance and enhancing benefits of graphene as a material in this space.
So, it gives real credence to the performance data package that we announced earlier in the year, in May, which included high levels of protection from harsh chemicals and the way that graphene dispersions could really enhance that performance in those types of applications when you add graphene to coating systems, whether it’s for car or whether it’s for even harsher chemical environment.
So all up, I feel it’s a great result with a much larger member of the car care community, it feeds the pathway to revenues, of course, but importantly it validates the work that we’re doing with graphene nanoplatelet materials in bringing viable realistic products to the mainstream market. So all up, great result.
