Haydale Graphene Industries PLC (LON:HAYD) Chief Executive Officer Ray Gibbs caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss the acquisition of Innophene Co., Ltd
Q1: Ray, you announced today the acquisition of Innophene, why are Haydale Graphene Industries buying a company in Thailand?
A1: Thailand is a fast growing area for us, it is part of our Far East Centre of Excellence expansion, Thailand has some low cost operatives, great facilities in the Thailand Science Park where Innophene is and some really really interesting and experienced professional scientists there who preside on R&D and indeed on the sales front.
Q2: Now your announcements states that they have a conductive ink, why do you need this when you already manufacture your own ink?
A2: Well the conductive ink is a transparent one and it’s patented in Thailand and it broadens our churches in the conductive ink market plus also they have PLA, the poly lactic acid which we announced we were going to launch in Birmingham in September and this is transparent, it’s not a non-black PLA so we’re broadening our range and this is a very interesting and ongoing development in the 3D printing market.
Q3: Now you stated the need for investment with the reactor and processing laboratory so what are the cost implications of this acquisition for the current year and beyond?
A3: The reactors that we’ve got currently in Wales are all ready to go, what we’re going to do is move one of those over to Thailand so the capital side of that will be fairly minimal to start with, depending upon volumes, because we want them to produce material for the Korean, Taiwan and Japan market because it’s much quicker, it’s 2 and a bit hours away rather than 6-8 hours with a low cost operation so I don’t see that there’ll be a massive amount of cost implication in the short term but of course as things grow we’ll be buying more reactors and putting them in that area too.
