1
00:00:00,280 --> 00:00:03,440
Speaker 1: Hi, this is Dana Perkins and you're listening to Switched

2
00:00:03,480 --> 00:00:06,560
Speaker 1: on the BNAF podcast, and on today's show, I am

3
00:00:06,600 --> 00:00:10,000
Speaker 1: actually going to be joined by a co host, Benjamin Caffrey.

4
00:00:10,320 --> 00:00:12,159
Speaker 1: One of the things that Benji does for us at

5
00:00:12,160 --> 00:00:15,400
Speaker 1: BNF is keep an eye on innovation and lead some

6
00:00:15,480 --> 00:00:18,160
Speaker 1: of our work there that then brings us to the

7
00:00:18,239 --> 00:00:21,160
Speaker 1: Pioneers Awards. If you want to find out more about

8
00:00:21,160 --> 00:00:25,080
Speaker 1: the Pioneers, we actually have information on the BNF website.

9
00:00:25,200 --> 00:00:29,080
Speaker 1: It's BNF dot com forward slash Pioneers. But let's give

10
00:00:29,080 --> 00:00:31,040
Speaker 1: you a little bit more context here on the show.

11
00:00:31,240 --> 00:00:33,239
Speaker 1: Instead of having me do it, let's go straight to

12
00:00:33,280 --> 00:00:36,080
Speaker 1: our conversation with Benji. Benji, thank you for joining us

13
00:00:36,159 --> 00:00:37,080
Speaker 1: on Switched on today.

14
00:00:37,240 --> 00:00:38,920
Speaker 2: Hi, Dana, thanks for inviting me.

15
00:00:39,240 --> 00:00:41,599
Speaker 1: I want to ask you first of all about how

16
00:00:41,720 --> 00:00:46,240
Speaker 1: BENEF approaches innovation, which is through our Pioneers program. Can

17
00:00:46,280 --> 00:00:48,640
Speaker 1: you explain what the Pioneers are?

18
00:00:49,159 --> 00:00:52,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, thank you, Dana. So it's great to be

19
00:00:52,440 --> 00:00:56,240
Speaker 2: here and great to dedicate a podcast for our Pioneers program.

20
00:00:56,480 --> 00:00:59,760
Speaker 2: BENEF Pioneers program is really our way to set a

21
00:01:00,560 --> 00:01:05,679
Speaker 2: recognize and learn from exciting innovative startup in the climate

22
00:01:05,720 --> 00:01:09,640
Speaker 2: tech area. That help our world to transform into a

23
00:01:09,640 --> 00:01:10,840
Speaker 2: lower carbon economy.

24
00:01:11,200 --> 00:01:14,080
Speaker 1: So each year we try and take this wide world

25
00:01:14,200 --> 00:01:17,160
Speaker 1: of clean tech innovation and actually focus it in on

26
00:01:17,240 --> 00:01:20,200
Speaker 1: a couple of themes so that the different companies that

27
00:01:20,200 --> 00:01:23,520
Speaker 1: we're looking at and that the winners really reflect areas

28
00:01:23,560 --> 00:01:26,679
Speaker 1: that we think are actually we really in need of

29
00:01:26,880 --> 00:01:30,280
Speaker 1: innovation for the energy transition. So what theme are we

30
00:01:30,360 --> 00:01:33,640
Speaker 1: going to drill into today, and perhaps you can also

31
00:01:33,760 --> 00:01:36,240
Speaker 1: give us a little more detail on well, just maybe

32
00:01:36,319 --> 00:01:38,319
Speaker 1: a highlight of what the other themes were in the

33
00:01:38,360 --> 00:01:40,720
Speaker 1: pioneers for the twenty twenty three winners.

34
00:01:41,160 --> 00:01:44,080
Speaker 2: Thank you, dan I. Yes, so that's true. Year we

35
00:01:44,200 --> 00:01:47,800
Speaker 2: try and focus on unsolved climate innovation gap. So we

36
00:01:47,920 --> 00:01:50,600
Speaker 2: choose three of these themes, and then we have a

37
00:01:50,640 --> 00:01:54,760
Speaker 2: force category which is a wildcut, so we like to

38
00:01:54,760 --> 00:01:59,040
Speaker 2: be surprised with exciting other climate tech innovators out there

39
00:01:58,880 --> 00:02:03,560
Speaker 2: that apply the theme for this year, we're accelerating the

40
00:02:03,640 --> 00:02:07,520
Speaker 2: deployment of clean hydrogen, so not only on the electoralizer

41
00:02:07,640 --> 00:02:10,440
Speaker 2: side of thing, but also looking across the whole value

42
00:02:10,520 --> 00:02:14,639
Speaker 2: chain of hydrogen and where innovation comes from. The second one,

43
00:02:14,639 --> 00:02:18,240
Speaker 2: which was really the topic of today, was around sustainable

44
00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:23,160
Speaker 2: metals and materials for an electrified future, so really looking

45
00:02:23,320 --> 00:02:27,079
Speaker 2: not only at how to make mining more sustainable, but

46
00:02:27,160 --> 00:02:30,240
Speaker 2: also how to secure enough supply for that transition. So

47
00:02:30,360 --> 00:02:33,760
Speaker 2: analysis show that basically in order to get to net

48
00:02:33,840 --> 00:02:36,640
Speaker 2: zero we need five times more of the current supply,

49
00:02:37,080 --> 00:02:38,880
Speaker 2: so a big challenge, and then we need to do

50
00:02:38,919 --> 00:02:41,600
Speaker 2: it in a less carbon intensive And then the third

51
00:02:41,639 --> 00:02:45,040
Speaker 2: one was about the carbonization of food system.

52
00:02:45,440 --> 00:02:49,480
Speaker 1: So Benji, you and I have been with BNF for

53
00:02:49,800 --> 00:02:52,480
Speaker 1: some time now, and I believe that you were involved

54
00:02:52,560 --> 00:02:55,080
Speaker 1: with the Pioneers from the very beginning. So give us

55
00:02:55,080 --> 00:02:57,760
Speaker 1: a little bit of a history lesson on the pioneers.

56
00:02:57,760 --> 00:02:59,280
Speaker 1: How long have we been doing this?

57
00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:02,919
Speaker 2: I think one of the unique things about Pioneers from

58
00:03:02,960 --> 00:03:04,440
Speaker 2: being a point of view, is that we have been

59
00:03:04,480 --> 00:03:06,359
Speaker 2: doing it for a while. We've been doing it for

60
00:03:06,440 --> 00:03:10,480
Speaker 2: thirteen years now, and we've been through the first kind

61
00:03:10,520 --> 00:03:13,960
Speaker 2: of clintech at one point, oh you know, hype and

62
00:03:14,080 --> 00:03:18,000
Speaker 2: bust and the evolution of the innovation emerging every year.

63
00:03:18,280 --> 00:03:22,200
Speaker 2: And we have close two hundred and fifty Pioneers winners

64
00:03:22,280 --> 00:03:26,919
Speaker 2: alumnis and actually, interesting fact, most of them been very successful.

65
00:03:26,960 --> 00:03:29,280
Speaker 2: So we have around forty percent of them that had

66
00:03:29,400 --> 00:03:32,880
Speaker 2: exits others through IPOs or M and A and then

67
00:03:33,560 --> 00:03:37,080
Speaker 2: close to this same ratio of ventures still going.

68
00:03:37,440 --> 00:03:39,880
Speaker 1: So I've actually only been lucky enough to be involved

69
00:03:39,880 --> 00:03:42,320
Speaker 1: for the past two years as one of the many

70
00:03:42,440 --> 00:03:44,920
Speaker 1: judges that actually look at all the applicants. But I

71
00:03:44,960 --> 00:03:47,040
Speaker 1: think it would be useful for our listeners to better

72
00:03:47,120 --> 00:03:50,640
Speaker 1: understand the sort of companies that we're assessing and looking

73
00:03:50,680 --> 00:03:54,520
Speaker 1: for in terms of really size and how disruptive their

74
00:03:54,560 --> 00:03:57,920
Speaker 1: technology could potentially be for the energy transition.

75
00:03:58,720 --> 00:04:01,680
Speaker 2: So for us, I mean the materia of the ponies

76
00:04:01,880 --> 00:04:05,720
Speaker 2: is to first look at who's original and what's kind

77
00:04:05,720 --> 00:04:09,320
Speaker 2: of innovative about what they do, And we are not investors,

78
00:04:09,360 --> 00:04:12,000
Speaker 2: so we have the luxury to really pick what's interesting,

79
00:04:12,240 --> 00:04:15,720
Speaker 2: and we have the other luxury of relying on our

80
00:04:15,920 --> 00:04:19,960
Speaker 2: amazing expertise and colleagues around the world and just be

81
00:04:20,040 --> 00:04:23,320
Speaker 2: able to focus on what's cool and interesting. The second

82
00:04:23,320 --> 00:04:28,040
Speaker 2: criteria is really around the impact they will have on

83
00:04:29,080 --> 00:04:31,960
Speaker 2: the transition to a lower carbon economy and net zero

84
00:04:32,279 --> 00:04:34,960
Speaker 2: and a lower carbon world. And the third they do

85
00:04:35,080 --> 00:04:39,039
Speaker 2: need to have some positive momentum, So basically we need

86
00:04:39,080 --> 00:04:42,400
Speaker 2: to know that they're able to take their original innovative

87
00:04:42,440 --> 00:04:47,040
Speaker 2: ideas and with the potential of impact, but actually help

88
00:04:47,120 --> 00:04:49,719
Speaker 2: fulfill that potential. So these are kind of the three

89
00:04:49,760 --> 00:04:51,200
Speaker 2: criterias we focus on.

90
00:04:51,560 --> 00:04:54,560
Speaker 1: And with that, let's jump into our conversations with the

91
00:04:54,600 --> 00:04:59,080
Speaker 1: winners of the challenge around metals and materials. We'll first

92
00:04:59,120 --> 00:05:02,200
Speaker 1: start with a my innovator named Jetty, and then we'll

93
00:05:02,279 --> 00:05:06,080
Speaker 1: next go to a battery innovator called end Cycle, followed

94
00:05:06,120 --> 00:05:09,840
Speaker 1: by another battery innovator, life Cycle. Let's hear from our

95
00:05:09,880 --> 00:05:13,920
Speaker 1: first guest, Mike Outwind, the co founder and CEO of Jetty.

96
00:05:14,120 --> 00:05:17,120
Speaker 1: Jetty are a natural resources company that have developed a

97
00:05:17,160 --> 00:05:20,640
Speaker 1: catalyst that can efficiently release copper from lower grade ore,

98
00:05:20,880 --> 00:05:24,000
Speaker 1: increasing a minds production for one of the most in

99
00:05:24,080 --> 00:05:26,880
Speaker 1: demand and essential metals for the energy transition.

100
00:05:34,240 --> 00:05:35,799
Speaker 3: Hi Mike, Hi Benjim.

101
00:05:36,200 --> 00:05:39,040
Speaker 2: I want to kick off with that personal question kind

102
00:05:39,080 --> 00:05:43,000
Speaker 2: of what brings you to Jetty in the industry. I

103
00:05:43,040 --> 00:05:45,800
Speaker 2: know you are on the investment side before what's your story?

104
00:05:46,279 --> 00:05:49,400
Speaker 4: Well, I'll actually take everything back to two thousand and eight.

105
00:05:49,520 --> 00:05:53,040
Speaker 4: I started working at a energy technology startup that year

106
00:05:53,120 --> 00:05:55,479
Speaker 4: while I was still in school. They had developed a

107
00:05:55,560 --> 00:05:58,800
Speaker 4: process to turn low grade coal and biomass into natural

108
00:05:58,839 --> 00:06:01,440
Speaker 4: gas while capturing your esteem of CO two for for

109
00:06:01,520 --> 00:06:05,120
Speaker 4: sequestration and the CEO who is my co founder at

110
00:06:05,160 --> 00:06:07,880
Speaker 4: Jettie now, Andrew Perlman. He also had a venture creation

111
00:06:08,000 --> 00:06:10,920
Speaker 4: firm which was responsible for creating some of the leading

112
00:06:10,960 --> 00:06:14,520
Speaker 4: clean tech one point zero companies spanning areas like geothermal,

113
00:06:14,839 --> 00:06:18,159
Speaker 4: bile fuels, water desalination. And so I actually spent half

114
00:06:18,200 --> 00:06:21,039
Speaker 4: my time working to support those companies and finding pain

115
00:06:21,080 --> 00:06:24,000
Speaker 4: points and ideas to start new ones, and then you know,

116
00:06:24,040 --> 00:06:27,000
Speaker 4: the other half bringing at the energy technology startup. So

117
00:06:27,080 --> 00:06:30,880
Speaker 4: I found myself at a really interesting intersection of advanced

118
00:06:30,880 --> 00:06:36,880
Speaker 4: technology development, the natural resources industry, entrepreneurialism, venture capital. And

119
00:06:36,960 --> 00:06:40,000
Speaker 4: you know, some really interesting things took place in those

120
00:06:40,040 --> 00:06:42,320
Speaker 4: first couple of years at the startup and the venture

121
00:06:42,360 --> 00:06:45,960
Speaker 4: firm that really underlie why Jettie exists today, why I

122
00:06:45,960 --> 00:06:49,040
Speaker 4: find myself doing what I do leading the company, you know,

123
00:06:49,040 --> 00:06:51,279
Speaker 4: many years later. And so you know, in the first

124
00:06:51,360 --> 00:06:54,520
Speaker 4: month that I was at the energy technology startup which

125
00:06:54,560 --> 00:06:58,160
Speaker 4: was turning coal the gas and then I mentioned biomass

126
00:06:58,240 --> 00:07:01,000
Speaker 4: earlier and natural gas that that point was at all

127
00:07:01,040 --> 00:07:03,960
Speaker 4: time highs. So thirteen dollars perm and BTU. The company

128
00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:06,640
Speaker 4: was on a rocket ship back by top top investors

129
00:07:06,640 --> 00:07:10,480
Speaker 4: like Cliner Perkins, Close Adventures, top strategic partners like Doubt Chemical.

130
00:07:10,680 --> 00:07:13,560
Speaker 4: But within two years gas had fallen to around two

131
00:07:13,600 --> 00:07:16,760
Speaker 4: dollars and fifty cents perm MV two. So what happened.

132
00:07:17,320 --> 00:07:21,080
Speaker 4: Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling had matured as technologies and

133
00:07:21,120 --> 00:07:24,960
Speaker 4: opened up an extraordinary new resource in show formations across

134
00:07:24,960 --> 00:07:26,920
Speaker 4: the US. So let's just say it was a little

135
00:07:26,920 --> 00:07:29,000
Speaker 4: bit of a surprise. You know, we were a bit blindsided,

136
00:07:29,200 --> 00:07:32,040
Speaker 4: And the result is that I was inspired along with

137
00:07:31,840 --> 00:07:34,560
Speaker 4: my co founder, to be the one surprising the natural

138
00:07:34,600 --> 00:07:36,920
Speaker 4: resources industry the next time, as opposed to being on

139
00:07:37,280 --> 00:07:40,200
Speaker 4: the receiving end. And the second major event that I'd

140
00:07:40,200 --> 00:07:43,320
Speaker 4: say impacted my thinking was was how the first clean

141
00:07:43,360 --> 00:07:46,760
Speaker 4: tech wave played out. It was pretty imparient after a

142
00:07:46,760 --> 00:07:50,560
Speaker 4: couple of years that capex intensive technologies funded by vcs

143
00:07:50,960 --> 00:07:53,080
Speaker 4: just couldn't get off the ground. And the way people

144
00:07:53,280 --> 00:07:56,280
Speaker 4: had expected plants that cost billions of dollars to build

145
00:07:56,480 --> 00:07:59,880
Speaker 4: using brand new technologies and played out for the first time,

146
00:08:00,280 --> 00:08:03,200
Speaker 4: it just wasn't going to make it. And so my

147
00:08:03,240 --> 00:08:05,440
Speaker 4: co founder and I we agreed that any company we

148
00:08:05,520 --> 00:08:08,360
Speaker 4: built in the space in the future, had to be ultracapitalize,

149
00:08:08,480 --> 00:08:11,400
Speaker 4: had to leverage existing infrastructure, had to be simple enough

150
00:08:11,440 --> 00:08:14,200
Speaker 4: and not it disrupped existing flow sheets so that there

151
00:08:14,320 --> 00:08:16,920
Speaker 4: was a high likelihood of it actually being accepted. We

152
00:08:17,200 --> 00:08:19,240
Speaker 4: thought those were hurdles that we had to get over

153
00:08:19,360 --> 00:08:22,720
Speaker 4: to tap any success again deploying advanced technology into the

154
00:08:22,800 --> 00:08:25,600
Speaker 4: natural resources sector. So, you know, with all that perspective,

155
00:08:25,880 --> 00:08:28,239
Speaker 4: I went out in search of some major pay points

156
00:08:28,320 --> 00:08:31,520
Speaker 4: facing the natural resource sector, and eventually I found the

157
00:08:31,680 --> 00:08:34,920
Speaker 4: chocolate pyriate problem in the copper mining industry. And the

158
00:08:35,559 --> 00:08:37,959
Speaker 4: background this problem is that seventy percent of the world's

159
00:08:37,960 --> 00:08:42,679
Speaker 4: remaining copper resources are trapped in or inaccessible to existing technology,

160
00:08:42,760 --> 00:08:45,520
Speaker 4: So trillions of dollars worth of copper, and I said,

161
00:08:45,559 --> 00:08:47,720
Speaker 4: h yeah, I think that may be big enough. We

162
00:08:47,720 --> 00:08:50,040
Speaker 4: were very very oriented by by market size back then

163
00:08:50,080 --> 00:08:52,400
Speaker 4: in terms of you know, starting companies, and that seemed

164
00:08:52,440 --> 00:08:54,520
Speaker 4: like a big enough pain point for us to go after.

165
00:08:55,000 --> 00:08:57,040
Speaker 4: You know, the industry had been trying to solve this

166
00:08:57,120 --> 00:08:59,960
Speaker 4: problem for decades without any luck, so maybe it was

167
00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:02,280
Speaker 4: a little audacious for us to think that we could,

168
00:09:02,320 --> 00:09:05,319
Speaker 4: but nonetheless we forged forward with it. So I sold

169
00:09:05,360 --> 00:09:07,680
Speaker 4: my you know, now co founder on the idea. We

170
00:09:07,720 --> 00:09:11,319
Speaker 4: went out and supported various projects to sponsored research at universities.

171
00:09:11,400 --> 00:09:14,400
Speaker 4: We were trying to develop a method for extracting copper

172
00:09:14,440 --> 00:09:17,680
Speaker 4: from that chocoal pyrite that trapped for plaguing in the industry,

173
00:09:17,920 --> 00:09:20,520
Speaker 4: and all the initial attempts failed. We spent a couple

174
00:09:20,559 --> 00:09:23,120
Speaker 4: of years sponsoring urse research. We just couldn't get anything

175
00:09:23,160 --> 00:09:25,520
Speaker 4: to work. There was always a fatal flaw. We considered

176
00:09:25,520 --> 00:09:28,040
Speaker 4: walking away, but you know, I reached out. My co

177
00:09:28,080 --> 00:09:29,760
Speaker 4: friend actually pushed me to reach out of this one

178
00:09:29,800 --> 00:09:32,480
Speaker 4: last professor at the University British Columbia who had a

179
00:09:32,559 --> 00:09:35,440
Speaker 4: top materials engineering department and they'd been working in this

180
00:09:35,480 --> 00:09:37,880
Speaker 4: area of chocoal parate leaching, and so I reached out

181
00:09:37,880 --> 00:09:40,040
Speaker 4: to the professor and he had a postdoc on his team,

182
00:09:40,160 --> 00:09:42,360
Speaker 4: a gentleman by the name of Ama Garaman who is

183
00:09:42,400 --> 00:09:45,720
Speaker 4: now the CEO of Cyclic Materials, and he had recently

184
00:09:45,760 --> 00:09:50,080
Speaker 4: made some really intriguing scientific observations running tests and during

185
00:09:50,120 --> 00:09:53,000
Speaker 4: this time he had developed the world's longest nana wire

186
00:09:53,160 --> 00:09:56,040
Speaker 4: from chocoal py write this mineral. He was creating thin

187
00:09:56,120 --> 00:09:58,839
Speaker 4: film solar cells out of chocolate part so he really,

188
00:09:58,880 --> 00:10:02,400
Speaker 4: really knew chocolate right, and in one of his experiments

189
00:10:02,440 --> 00:10:06,560
Speaker 4: he actually identified this family of compounds that appeared to

190
00:10:06,600 --> 00:10:09,600
Speaker 4: have a catalogic effect on the charcoal pyrite, causing ten

191
00:10:09,840 --> 00:10:14,040
Speaker 4: x more copper to exit the mineral than without those compounds.

192
00:10:14,080 --> 00:10:17,520
Speaker 4: So he said, this is something pretty interesting. I haven't

193
00:10:17,559 --> 00:10:19,960
Speaker 4: seen this before. Maybe there's something we could do with it.

194
00:10:20,000 --> 00:10:22,160
Speaker 4: And so at that point we wanted to see if

195
00:10:22,240 --> 00:10:24,640
Speaker 4: we could actually develop a technology out of the science,

196
00:10:24,679 --> 00:10:27,199
Speaker 4: and so we created a collaborative development agreement with the

197
00:10:27,240 --> 00:10:30,560
Speaker 4: University of British Clubia, and by the summer twenty fourteen,

198
00:10:30,920 --> 00:10:33,760
Speaker 4: so heading towards ten years ago, the results we're looking

199
00:10:33,800 --> 00:10:36,400
Speaker 4: promising enough and we hadn't found any fatal flaws which

200
00:10:36,480 --> 00:10:39,120
Speaker 4: we'd ran into before, and so we thought we could

201
00:10:39,160 --> 00:10:42,920
Speaker 4: justify actually raising capital, and we incorporated Jetty and we

202
00:10:43,000 --> 00:10:46,000
Speaker 4: secured the funding. And we have taken everything that we

203
00:10:46,080 --> 00:10:50,000
Speaker 4: learned from those early startups that were in the portfolio,

204
00:10:50,000 --> 00:10:53,000
Speaker 4: all those Queen Tech one point zero startups, all the failures,

205
00:10:53,040 --> 00:10:56,480
Speaker 4: the successes, how to construct them the best, how to

206
00:10:56,520 --> 00:10:59,760
Speaker 4: put fantastic teams around them, protect your intellectual property, make

207
00:10:59,800 --> 00:11:02,280
Speaker 4: things simple and have low capex. All of that went

208
00:11:02,320 --> 00:11:05,160
Speaker 4: into Jetty, so Jedti truly had a massive leg up,

209
00:11:05,200 --> 00:11:08,960
Speaker 4: and so that's how I found myself in the cover sector,

210
00:11:09,080 --> 00:11:13,040
Speaker 4: building a technology company that can really disrupt it.

211
00:11:13,440 --> 00:11:16,480
Speaker 1: You know, ben ef we definitely look at metals in

212
00:11:16,559 --> 00:11:19,200
Speaker 1: future demand, and copper is one of those that you

213
00:11:19,240 --> 00:11:23,960
Speaker 1: can find in wind, solar batteries, grids. It's a critical

214
00:11:23,960 --> 00:11:28,360
Speaker 1: commodity for the energy transition. But mining activities are also polluting.

215
00:11:28,440 --> 00:11:34,000
Speaker 1: So in addition to increasing the accessibility of this important metal,

216
00:11:34,200 --> 00:11:35,920
Speaker 1: can you also talk a little bit more about the

217
00:11:35,960 --> 00:11:39,120
Speaker 1: problem that Jetty's also able to solve when it comes

218
00:11:39,200 --> 00:11:40,920
Speaker 1: to pollution and emissions.

219
00:11:41,320 --> 00:11:44,640
Speaker 4: Sure, well, I'll actually cover that in two parts. I

220
00:11:44,720 --> 00:11:46,920
Speaker 4: think one of the what's the problem that we're trying

221
00:11:46,960 --> 00:11:50,040
Speaker 4: to solve as a company. I think that's unlocking these

222
00:11:50,080 --> 00:11:55,200
Speaker 4: restrained copper resources that are needed for an increasingly electrified future.

223
00:11:55,520 --> 00:11:58,360
Speaker 4: That's the vision for the company. Fundamentally, as you mentioned,

224
00:11:58,360 --> 00:12:01,000
Speaker 4: we believe that the world needs more oper to handle

225
00:12:01,080 --> 00:12:05,040
Speaker 4: the expected surge and demand from clean energy technologies, you know,

226
00:12:05,080 --> 00:12:08,680
Speaker 4: that will drive decarbonization. Just going further into the angle

227
00:12:08,720 --> 00:12:12,400
Speaker 4: you're pursuing there, a three megawatt wind turbine can use

228
00:12:12,520 --> 00:12:15,160
Speaker 4: up to four point seven tons of copper. The NEB

229
00:12:15,320 --> 00:12:18,160
Speaker 4: requires two point five times more copper than a conventional

230
00:12:18,280 --> 00:12:22,280
Speaker 4: internal combustion engine vehicle. And in fact, I think Bloomberg

231
00:12:22,520 --> 00:12:24,320
Speaker 4: and e F forecast that copper demand is going to

232
00:12:24,320 --> 00:12:27,120
Speaker 4: grow about fifty three percent from now it's twenty forty,

233
00:12:27,160 --> 00:12:30,200
Speaker 4: but the supply is only projected to rise by sixteen percent.

234
00:12:30,280 --> 00:12:34,600
Speaker 4: So there's a huge structural shortage that's forming. And although

235
00:12:34,600 --> 00:12:36,440
Speaker 4: it's going to take you know, many solutions, we believe

236
00:12:36,480 --> 00:12:38,840
Speaker 4: Jetti's the industry is best hope right now to deliver

237
00:12:39,080 --> 00:12:40,960
Speaker 4: the supply that need to bridge that gap in the

238
00:12:40,960 --> 00:12:43,480
Speaker 4: cleanest way. And that's we're all pivot into talking about

239
00:12:43,480 --> 00:12:46,120
Speaker 4: specifically what we do and why why we believe we're

240
00:12:46,160 --> 00:12:49,559
Speaker 4: truly producing clean copper. So there's all that dropped material

241
00:12:49,600 --> 00:12:51,520
Speaker 4: that I've mentioned before, that's seventy percent of the world's

242
00:12:51,520 --> 00:12:55,040
Speaker 4: formating copper contained in order that's inaccessible. And so what

243
00:12:55,160 --> 00:12:58,160
Speaker 4: happens at these minds, that extraordinary amount of material is

244
00:12:58,160 --> 00:13:00,600
Speaker 4: is mind It's it's blasted in the pit, put into

245
00:13:00,640 --> 00:13:03,839
Speaker 4: a truck, diesels expended, navigating out of the pit, moving

246
00:13:03,840 --> 00:13:05,920
Speaker 4: it to a big waste pile. It's loaded into that

247
00:13:05,960 --> 00:13:08,440
Speaker 4: waste pile, and then if you're not leaching it, if

248
00:13:08,480 --> 00:13:10,360
Speaker 4: you're not actually getting any copper out of it, it's

249
00:13:10,440 --> 00:13:14,160
Speaker 4: left there and it's an environmental liability. And so many companies,

250
00:13:14,520 --> 00:13:18,160
Speaker 4: certainly the companies that we work with, manage these waste

251
00:13:18,160 --> 00:13:22,240
Speaker 4: piles very diligently and ensure that they're not environmental liabilities.

252
00:13:22,280 --> 00:13:24,319
Speaker 4: But I think what Jetty does is it puts a

253
00:13:24,320 --> 00:13:27,400
Speaker 4: lot of focus on these waste streams because we're turning

254
00:13:27,400 --> 00:13:30,840
Speaker 4: them into revenue streams, and so it allows us to

255
00:13:31,440 --> 00:13:34,560
Speaker 4: improve I think, the management of these waste piles. But

256
00:13:34,760 --> 00:13:38,439
Speaker 4: also if you think about this material, it's getting mined anyways,

257
00:13:38,440 --> 00:13:41,520
Speaker 4: it's oftentimes in the way of higher grade or that's

258
00:13:41,559 --> 00:13:44,520
Speaker 4: going to go to a concentrator, and so what we're

259
00:13:44,520 --> 00:13:47,840
Speaker 4: doing is actually changing the denominator where for all the

260
00:13:47,840 --> 00:13:50,440
Speaker 4: emissions that are already being spent, all the water consumption

261
00:13:50,480 --> 00:13:53,160
Speaker 4: that's already happening at these mines, were increasing the copper production,

262
00:13:53,360 --> 00:13:57,160
Speaker 4: and so we're driving down the emission's profile water consumption

263
00:13:57,280 --> 00:14:00,520
Speaker 4: profile for the entire asset. We're effectively trained positioning it

264
00:14:00,559 --> 00:14:02,720
Speaker 4: into being a cleaner asset as a result of the

265
00:14:02,760 --> 00:14:05,920
Speaker 4: technology's presence. Also One thing I note is that we're

266
00:14:05,920 --> 00:14:10,280
Speaker 4: a hydrometallurgical technology. Our catalyst bolts onto a system that

267
00:14:10,679 --> 00:14:13,640
Speaker 4: is run by solution coming into contact with a big

268
00:14:13,720 --> 00:14:17,320
Speaker 4: pile of ore, as opposed to a pyrometallurgical process, which

269
00:14:17,360 --> 00:14:22,240
Speaker 4: is using extreme heat and chemicals and to break down

270
00:14:22,440 --> 00:14:26,000
Speaker 4: and crushing and grinding and milling or and smelting in

271
00:14:26,080 --> 00:14:29,560
Speaker 4: order to produce the copper. In the hydrometallurgical world, we

272
00:14:29,680 --> 00:14:33,920
Speaker 4: use a microbial system that's existed for three billion years,

273
00:14:34,000 --> 00:14:38,120
Speaker 4: lithotrophs and acidophiles that metibolize the iron and copper and

274
00:14:38,160 --> 00:14:40,560
Speaker 4: sulfur that's in the ore to release the copper. We

275
00:14:40,920 --> 00:14:43,880
Speaker 4: use these solutions that are produced by the ore naturally

276
00:14:43,960 --> 00:14:46,840
Speaker 4: to run that process, and then all the copper that's

277
00:14:46,880 --> 00:14:49,760
Speaker 4: exiting the heat is solubilized and it goes into a

278
00:14:49,960 --> 00:14:54,080
Speaker 4: solvent extraction an electro winning process where over a week's time,

279
00:14:54,160 --> 00:14:56,640
Speaker 4: you plate the copper in these in these pools, and

280
00:14:56,640 --> 00:14:59,120
Speaker 4: then you have your ninety nine point nine nine nine

281
00:14:59,120 --> 00:15:02,040
Speaker 4: percent pure cop product that can be sold to the

282
00:15:02,080 --> 00:15:05,400
Speaker 4: market to go into chips and electronics and whatnot. And

283
00:15:05,440 --> 00:15:09,000
Speaker 4: so we really think that we're a lynch pin for

284
00:15:09,320 --> 00:15:12,920
Speaker 4: allowing the industry to leverage this very low capital and

285
00:15:12,960 --> 00:15:16,040
Speaker 4: operating cost technology to also bring about this clean copper

286
00:15:16,080 --> 00:15:19,240
Speaker 4: production in a way that the industry hasn't seen before.

287
00:15:19,280 --> 00:15:21,080
Speaker 4: So I think those are some of the ways that

288
00:15:21,160 --> 00:15:23,920
Speaker 4: we're doing it better than has been done previously, and

289
00:15:23,920 --> 00:15:27,440
Speaker 4: we're helping our partners be better stewards of the resources

290
00:15:27,480 --> 00:15:29,280
Speaker 4: that they're entrusted to process.

291
00:15:29,680 --> 00:15:32,880
Speaker 2: Mike's where are you on the kind of scaling and

292
00:15:32,960 --> 00:15:36,920
Speaker 2: commercialization journey? Is this actually happening on the ground with

293
00:15:37,040 --> 00:15:37,880
Speaker 2: real clients.

294
00:15:38,160 --> 00:15:38,480
Speaker 5: It is?

295
00:15:38,640 --> 00:15:41,280
Speaker 4: It is right now. We have two commercial operations that

296
00:15:41,320 --> 00:15:44,280
Speaker 4: have been running for years in Arizona in the US,

297
00:15:44,520 --> 00:15:47,480
Speaker 4: and at the first one we were able to double

298
00:15:47,520 --> 00:15:50,480
Speaker 4: the amount of copper production within one year that was

299
00:15:50,520 --> 00:15:53,040
Speaker 4: coming out of an area under leach. At that site

300
00:15:53,080 --> 00:15:55,520
Speaker 4: a three hundred million ton stockpile. And so starting back

301
00:15:55,560 --> 00:15:58,400
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty, we had proven to the industry that

302
00:15:58,440 --> 00:16:02,120
Speaker 4: for the first time, after decades of investigation by the industry,

303
00:16:02,320 --> 00:16:05,080
Speaker 4: it was proven that you could actually extract copper from

304
00:16:05,080 --> 00:16:06,800
Speaker 4: this stranded or it was possible. And so with that

305
00:16:06,960 --> 00:16:10,320
Speaker 4: we were able to attract interest and investment from some

306
00:16:10,360 --> 00:16:13,120
Speaker 4: of the world's biggest mining companies such as PHP preport

307
00:16:13,160 --> 00:16:18,200
Speaker 4: mac brand tech companies such as BMW and Mitsubishi became

308
00:16:18,240 --> 00:16:20,480
Speaker 4: some supporters of the company as investors, and so we

309
00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:23,840
Speaker 4: very much are commercial. We're building our third commercial operation

310
00:16:23,960 --> 00:16:26,600
Speaker 4: right now in the north of Chile. This site is

311
00:16:26,640 --> 00:16:29,640
Speaker 4: going to produce just around ten times more copper than

312
00:16:29,680 --> 00:16:32,440
Speaker 4: either of our first operations have and then there's a

313
00:16:32,440 --> 00:16:35,880
Speaker 4: pipeline of twenty additional projects behind that. So jet jetty

314
00:16:36,000 --> 00:16:39,960
Speaker 4: is a proven commercial technology that is starting to make

315
00:16:40,000 --> 00:16:41,720
Speaker 4: an impact right now on the industry.

316
00:16:42,240 --> 00:16:44,960
Speaker 2: How exposed are you to the commodity side of things?

317
00:16:45,160 --> 00:16:48,480
Speaker 2: Is there a price of copper that underwach doesn't make

318
00:16:48,560 --> 00:16:50,360
Speaker 2: sense for you to operate?

319
00:16:50,760 --> 00:16:54,240
Speaker 4: Well, you can look at higher metallurgy and leaching as

320
00:16:54,320 --> 00:16:58,480
Speaker 4: really the low cost option for the industry to produce copper.

321
00:16:58,560 --> 00:17:01,040
Speaker 4: Normally at a big mind, you have two different sides.

322
00:17:01,080 --> 00:17:03,880
Speaker 4: You got the concentrator, the pyro metallurgy, where you you

323
00:17:04,000 --> 00:17:07,520
Speaker 4: mil the rocks down into into micron size and then

324
00:17:07,520 --> 00:17:09,600
Speaker 4: put them in a chemical bath and apply heat and

325
00:17:09,800 --> 00:17:11,960
Speaker 4: you're able to create this concentrate that then gets shipped

326
00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:14,600
Speaker 4: to a smelter normally in Asia, and so that's the

327
00:17:14,680 --> 00:17:18,600
Speaker 4: higher cost approach. It's justified because they're usually working on

328
00:17:18,680 --> 00:17:21,320
Speaker 4: higher grade or there's more copper in you know, a

329
00:17:21,359 --> 00:17:23,560
Speaker 4: ton of ore than in the lower grade material that

330
00:17:23,720 --> 00:17:26,560
Speaker 4: oftentimes goes to the waste stockpile or or if there's

331
00:17:26,680 --> 00:17:29,160
Speaker 4: enough copper in it, to the leech stockpile. And over

332
00:17:29,200 --> 00:17:33,200
Speaker 4: there you're really just using this acid solution and water

333
00:17:33,320 --> 00:17:35,400
Speaker 4: and the microbes do a lot of the work for you.

334
00:17:35,400 --> 00:17:38,560
Speaker 4: You know, you're able to leverage this already existing biological

335
00:17:38,600 --> 00:17:42,560
Speaker 4: system that's there, and so leaching produces as copper cathode

336
00:17:42,600 --> 00:17:45,160
Speaker 4: at the end, and it's oftentimes at half the operating

337
00:17:45,200 --> 00:17:49,440
Speaker 4: costs as the pyro metallurgical side, and so we we benefit,

338
00:17:49,640 --> 00:17:52,280
Speaker 4: we think in all parts of a cycle. If the

339
00:17:52,320 --> 00:17:54,679
Speaker 4: copper prices go high, people want to produce just more

340
00:17:54,680 --> 00:17:56,080
Speaker 4: and more and more, and so they're going to push

341
00:17:56,119 --> 00:17:58,680
Speaker 4: to do more projects as they can or to pump

342
00:17:58,680 --> 00:18:01,120
Speaker 4: as much copper production out of the site as they can.

343
00:18:01,200 --> 00:18:03,040
Speaker 4: So they're going to put the foot on the accelerator

344
00:18:03,119 --> 00:18:06,440
Speaker 4: for our leaching projects there and then in lower copper

345
00:18:06,480 --> 00:18:09,280
Speaker 4: price environments, and we experienced this a couple of years ago.

346
00:18:09,359 --> 00:18:12,840
Speaker 4: Actually we've been operating since twenty nineteen commercially, so We've

347
00:18:12,880 --> 00:18:15,600
Speaker 4: been through highs and those of copper price, and what

348
00:18:15,640 --> 00:18:18,320
Speaker 4: we saw when copper price plummeted is that there was

349
00:18:18,359 --> 00:18:21,560
Speaker 4: a significant increased interest on behalf of the miner to

350
00:18:22,080 --> 00:18:24,640
Speaker 4: ratchet up production from the leach side because well, that's

351
00:18:24,720 --> 00:18:27,400
Speaker 4: lower cost copper, you've got better margins, and they'll pull

352
00:18:27,440 --> 00:18:29,600
Speaker 4: back a little bit on the concentrator. So we think

353
00:18:29,640 --> 00:18:33,399
Speaker 4: we were very, very very well positioned to participate in

354
00:18:33,440 --> 00:18:34,359
Speaker 4: any part of the cycle.

355
00:18:34,400 --> 00:18:36,880
Speaker 2: Really and what's your plan for the future.

356
00:18:37,280 --> 00:18:41,720
Speaker 4: It's really focused on additional rollout of the technology some

357
00:18:41,800 --> 00:18:44,359
Speaker 4: of the world's largest mines over the next couple of years.

358
00:18:44,359 --> 00:18:47,080
Speaker 4: As I mentioned before, we've got this very strong pipeline

359
00:18:47,119 --> 00:18:50,600
Speaker 4: of opportunities that we're transitioning into project phase right now.

360
00:18:50,720 --> 00:18:53,919
Speaker 4: We have a couple very large minds that we've been

361
00:18:53,960 --> 00:18:55,840
Speaker 4: testing with for quite some time. One of them is

362
00:18:56,359 --> 00:19:00,719
Speaker 4: Escondida by BHP, the world's largest copper mind. Like our

363
00:19:00,760 --> 00:19:04,160
Speaker 4: technology has the potential to make a real impact there

364
00:19:04,200 --> 00:19:06,320
Speaker 4: and at many other large minds. So we are in

365
00:19:06,600 --> 00:19:09,359
Speaker 4: execution mode as a company. We're looking at delivering these

366
00:19:09,440 --> 00:19:12,520
Speaker 4: high quality projects for our partners and have a real

367
00:19:12,560 --> 00:19:15,560
Speaker 4: impact at their sites to drive down their costs and

368
00:19:15,640 --> 00:19:17,480
Speaker 4: be able to bring about I mentioned this before, be

369
00:19:17,560 --> 00:19:20,360
Speaker 4: able to bring about minds worth of copper production from

370
00:19:20,359 --> 00:19:23,000
Speaker 4: an already existing asset, so that the industry has less

371
00:19:23,000 --> 00:19:24,920
Speaker 4: of a need to do the exploration to find new

372
00:19:24,960 --> 00:19:28,199
Speaker 4: minds to better use the resources that we already have.

373
00:19:28,480 --> 00:19:31,760
Speaker 4: We think we're a real facilitator of resource maximization. So

374
00:19:31,960 --> 00:19:36,040
Speaker 4: we are an execution, commercial project oriented company right now,

375
00:19:36,080 --> 00:19:38,200
Speaker 4: and we want to do it at the most significant

376
00:19:38,280 --> 00:19:41,080
Speaker 4: level as we can. So that's what you can expect

377
00:19:41,080 --> 00:19:43,399
Speaker 4: to see from us for the next year, is playing

378
00:19:43,400 --> 00:19:46,000
Speaker 4: this role as a lynchpin for the industry to bring

379
00:19:46,040 --> 00:19:47,760
Speaker 4: about that needed copper production.

380
00:19:48,040 --> 00:19:50,120
Speaker 1: Mike, thank you very much for telling us a bit

381
00:19:50,160 --> 00:19:53,600
Speaker 1: more about Jetty, your technology and how you're unlocking the

382
00:19:53,640 --> 00:19:57,280
Speaker 1: availability of copper for so many industries that rely on

383
00:19:57,440 --> 00:19:59,040
Speaker 1: this really important metal.

384
00:19:59,280 --> 00:19:59,879
Speaker 4: Welcome Dantam.

385
00:20:05,480 --> 00:20:08,679
Speaker 1: Now let's hear from our next guest, Megan O'Connor, the

386
00:20:08,680 --> 00:20:12,560
Speaker 1: co founder and CEO of end Cycle en Cycles. Metal

387
00:20:12,600 --> 00:20:18,520
Speaker 1: refining technology transforms feedstocks, including scrap and end of life electronics,

388
00:20:18,640 --> 00:20:22,800
Speaker 1: into high purity critical metals in their modular, commercial scale

389
00:20:22,920 --> 00:20:24,680
Speaker 1: electro extraction unit.

390
00:20:24,560 --> 00:20:25,639
Speaker 2: Called the Oyster.

391
00:20:30,160 --> 00:20:32,119
Speaker 1: Megan, thank you so much. For joining us today.

392
00:20:32,440 --> 00:20:34,480
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be on.

393
00:20:35,080 --> 00:20:36,840
Speaker 1: Well, Megan, I want to know a little bit more

394
00:20:36,880 --> 00:20:40,159
Speaker 1: about you, so talk a little bit about really how

395
00:20:40,600 --> 00:20:43,199
Speaker 1: you came to this industry, and let's talk about you

396
00:20:43,240 --> 00:20:45,400
Speaker 1: before we talk about the technology and the business.

397
00:20:45,760 --> 00:20:48,919
Speaker 3: Sure. Sure. So I'm one of the co founders and

398
00:20:48,960 --> 00:20:50,040
Speaker 3: the CEO of end Cycle.

399
00:20:50,280 --> 00:20:54,000
Speaker 5: We started the company back in twenty seventeen, and really

400
00:20:54,040 --> 00:20:56,000
Speaker 5: the history of the company and how we came to

401
00:20:56,040 --> 00:20:58,320
Speaker 5: this idea because I'm a first time founder, so I

402
00:20:58,480 --> 00:21:01,240
Speaker 5: was in academia before this actual I was getting my

403
00:21:01,320 --> 00:21:05,080
Speaker 5: PhD when I met my co founder, Chad Basidis, who

404
00:21:05,200 --> 00:21:07,440
Speaker 5: was a full time professor at Harvard at the time,

405
00:21:07,560 --> 00:21:10,120
Speaker 5: and he had developed this really cool technology that's now

406
00:21:10,160 --> 00:21:12,119
Speaker 5: at the core of what we do at Encycle, but

407
00:21:12,200 --> 00:21:15,520
Speaker 5: he had developed it for completely different application and wastewater treatment,

408
00:21:15,680 --> 00:21:17,720
Speaker 5: and it was all luck I think that I saw

409
00:21:17,800 --> 00:21:20,560
Speaker 5: him just giving a talk on the technology and I thought, Wow,

410
00:21:20,600 --> 00:21:23,320
Speaker 5: this is really cool how he sought to combine these

411
00:21:23,480 --> 00:21:28,040
Speaker 5: age old processes from the chemical industry for this application,

412
00:21:28,280 --> 00:21:30,240
Speaker 5: but didn't really think much else of it at the time.

413
00:21:30,480 --> 00:21:33,240
Speaker 3: A few months later, I found myself at this event.

414
00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:36,040
Speaker 5: Called the Green Electronics Summit at the university I was at,

415
00:21:36,040 --> 00:21:37,919
Speaker 5: and I was a professor who had been able to

416
00:21:37,920 --> 00:21:41,920
Speaker 5: invite really the lead in the consumer electronics industry, I think,

417
00:21:41,960 --> 00:21:44,399
Speaker 5: like Apple and Dell and all these companies who were

418
00:21:44,440 --> 00:21:46,720
Speaker 5: trying to be really green and transparent with their supply chains.

419
00:21:46,720 --> 00:21:48,560
Speaker 5: And so they were all at this event talking about

420
00:21:48,600 --> 00:21:51,600
Speaker 5: the sustainability issues they saw coming down the road over

421
00:21:51,640 --> 00:21:53,160
Speaker 5: the next five to ten years. And this was back

422
00:21:53,359 --> 00:21:56,080
Speaker 5: in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, so it was over ten

423
00:21:56,160 --> 00:21:57,520
Speaker 5: years ago, or almost ten years ago.

424
00:21:57,560 --> 00:21:59,320
Speaker 3: And I should say, and you know, I fought my

425
00:21:59,359 --> 00:22:00,200
Speaker 3: way into that room.

426
00:22:00,040 --> 00:22:03,480
Speaker 5: Because students weren't It was not open to students, and

427
00:22:03,520 --> 00:22:05,560
Speaker 5: so I bagged my way in and they finally let

428
00:22:05,560 --> 00:22:07,640
Speaker 5: me be the bribe for nine hours, so taking notes

429
00:22:07,680 --> 00:22:09,639
Speaker 5: for nine hours. But it was so worth doing that

430
00:22:09,680 --> 00:22:11,760
Speaker 5: because over and over again in that room, I kept

431
00:22:11,800 --> 00:22:14,400
Speaker 5: hearing the same two themes, the same two problems from

432
00:22:14,400 --> 00:22:15,359
Speaker 5: every company that spoke.

433
00:22:15,440 --> 00:22:17,639
Speaker 3: The first one was waste management. All of these companies

434
00:22:17,680 --> 00:22:20,480
Speaker 3: are producing, whether it's laptops or cell phones or some

435
00:22:20,560 --> 00:22:22,960
Speaker 3: type of consumer electronic device, and they were all worried

436
00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:23,720
Speaker 3: about what was.

437
00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:25,560
Speaker 5: Going to happen with all of these devices once they

438
00:22:25,600 --> 00:22:27,520
Speaker 5: reached their end of life. Right, we don't have a

439
00:22:27,720 --> 00:22:30,560
Speaker 5: waste management solution right now. Our solution is to collect

440
00:22:30,560 --> 00:22:33,200
Speaker 5: everything and then ship it overseas, either to be landfilled

441
00:22:33,320 --> 00:22:36,119
Speaker 5: or quote unquote recycled in some capacity. And the second

442
00:22:36,160 --> 00:22:38,760
Speaker 5: theme I heard was these folks were worried about supply chain.

443
00:22:38,840 --> 00:22:39,000
Speaker 3: Right.

444
00:22:39,000 --> 00:22:41,960
Speaker 5: They all use cobalts and nickel, these critical mineral that

445
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:43,720
Speaker 5: I think a lot of people here but might not

446
00:22:43,840 --> 00:22:45,760
Speaker 5: know what they are. And these are really like the

447
00:22:45,760 --> 00:22:48,240
Speaker 5: building blocks of the clean energy economy. And they were

448
00:22:48,240 --> 00:22:50,399
Speaker 5: worried about the small amounts that they used in these

449
00:22:50,400 --> 00:22:51,440
Speaker 5: consumer electronics.

450
00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:54,240
Speaker 3: And they said, imagine a world ten years from now when.

451
00:22:54,080 --> 00:22:57,680
Speaker 5: Hopefully electric vehicles will be much more abundant on the road,

452
00:22:57,840 --> 00:23:00,399
Speaker 5: and they use orders of magnitude more of these metals.

453
00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:02,080
Speaker 3: And they're not the only technology that do.

454
00:23:02,240 --> 00:23:04,919
Speaker 5: Right, we have winterbines that use these metals different critical

455
00:23:04,960 --> 00:23:07,240
Speaker 5: mineralized to day, but in the same category we have

456
00:23:07,359 --> 00:23:09,840
Speaker 5: solar panels. And where are we going to get all

457
00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:12,840
Speaker 5: these materials from when there's already an issue with supply

458
00:23:12,920 --> 00:23:14,760
Speaker 5: chain and we're not even really building any of this

459
00:23:14,840 --> 00:23:17,080
Speaker 5: technology yet. And so I walked at that room feeling

460
00:23:17,080 --> 00:23:20,080
Speaker 5: pretty inspired to actually completely change my PhD projects. I

461
00:23:20,160 --> 00:23:22,080
Speaker 5: was not working in the critical mineral space at all,

462
00:23:22,160 --> 00:23:23,560
Speaker 5: but to try and figure out a way to sort

463
00:23:23,560 --> 00:23:26,000
Speaker 5: of solve these two issues at the same time with

464
00:23:26,160 --> 00:23:29,720
Speaker 5: developing a way to refine end of life materials like

465
00:23:29,880 --> 00:23:32,240
Speaker 5: end of life batteries, to turn them into the materials

466
00:23:32,240 --> 00:23:34,119
Speaker 5: that we need right to create a much more robust

467
00:23:34,160 --> 00:23:37,440
Speaker 5: sustainable supply chain here domestically and within the Western world

468
00:23:37,440 --> 00:23:39,840
Speaker 5: in general, because we all face the same issues over here.

469
00:23:40,040 --> 00:23:40,680
Speaker 3: And so I.

470
00:23:40,720 --> 00:23:43,640
Speaker 5: Walked up into my PhD advisor's office and I asked

471
00:23:43,680 --> 00:23:45,639
Speaker 5: her if I could push my project thinking back to

472
00:23:46,080 --> 00:23:48,719
Speaker 5: Chad's technology, so to bring it back to Chad, and

473
00:23:48,800 --> 00:23:51,040
Speaker 5: I said, Chad, I wonder if this technology could work

474
00:23:51,040 --> 00:23:53,320
Speaker 5: for metal refining, and he said he thought it could

475
00:23:53,560 --> 00:23:53,879
Speaker 5: and he was.

476
00:23:53,840 --> 00:23:55,440
Speaker 3: Happy for me to work on it. And so that's

477
00:23:55,440 --> 00:23:57,280
Speaker 3: what I did. For the next three years. We co

478
00:23:57,400 --> 00:23:59,480
Speaker 3: developed it, and that's what I wrote my dissertation on.

479
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:01,360
Speaker 5: And then we got to the end of that journey

480
00:24:01,480 --> 00:24:03,520
Speaker 5: and I graduated, and the next day I started the

481
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:06,040
Speaker 5: company because I felt like there was so much potential

482
00:24:06,160 --> 00:24:09,359
Speaker 5: and need for innovation in the critical minerals refining space,

483
00:24:09,359 --> 00:24:10,440
Speaker 5: which is really where we sit.

484
00:24:10,960 --> 00:24:14,080
Speaker 2: Wow, that's so tell us a bit more about how

485
00:24:14,119 --> 00:24:17,680
Speaker 2: do we recycle batteries today and kind of about how

486
00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:21,080
Speaker 2: unique your solution is. What are you doing that is different?

487
00:24:21,520 --> 00:24:24,600
Speaker 3: Absolutely so if you look at the world of refining,

488
00:24:24,800 --> 00:24:28,119
Speaker 3: we call ourselves a metal refining company because really all

489
00:24:28,400 --> 00:24:31,359
Speaker 3: material is pretty much refined in the same way, whether

490
00:24:31,480 --> 00:24:34,640
Speaker 3: it's end of life materials like a spent lithy mind battery,

491
00:24:34,680 --> 00:24:36,919
Speaker 3: and even if you look at the front end of

492
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:39,359
Speaker 3: the value chain and how we pull metals out of

493
00:24:39,400 --> 00:24:41,920
Speaker 3: the ground with mining and refine them, it's actually very

494
00:24:41,960 --> 00:24:44,560
Speaker 3: similar processes in which both of these either end of

495
00:24:44,600 --> 00:24:46,960
Speaker 3: life or beginning of life materials are processed.

496
00:24:47,119 --> 00:24:49,800
Speaker 5: And especially in the Western world, typically what happens is

497
00:24:49,840 --> 00:24:52,240
Speaker 5: they are collected by quote unquote recyclers.

498
00:24:52,280 --> 00:24:54,399
Speaker 3: So these are just folks on the logistics.

499
00:24:53,880 --> 00:24:57,359
Speaker 5: Side who have various channels to collect these materials. They

500
00:24:57,400 --> 00:24:59,720
Speaker 5: might shred them down to make them less hazardous, to

501
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:02,480
Speaker 5: be a to shift them really overseas or at least

502
00:25:02,520 --> 00:25:05,760
Speaker 5: very far distances. We don't have much refining capacity here,

503
00:25:05,840 --> 00:25:08,160
Speaker 5: at least in the US, so it typically shipped overseas

504
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:11,720
Speaker 5: to be smelted into intermediate materials. So smelting, if folks

505
00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:13,320
Speaker 5: don't know out there, it's think of it like a

506
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:16,120
Speaker 5: large furnace. It's very high temperature, high pressure to really

507
00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:18,719
Speaker 5: thermally separate out a lot of these metals. And then

508
00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:21,840
Speaker 5: it typically goes through a what I call final refining step,

509
00:25:21,880 --> 00:25:24,480
Speaker 5: which is called hydro metallurgy, which is a fancy word

510
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:26,520
Speaker 5: to say they use a lot of chemicals and solvents

511
00:25:26,600 --> 00:25:30,280
Speaker 5: to purify the metals into their purest form that we

512
00:25:30,440 --> 00:25:32,680
Speaker 5: sell it at. And so, as you can tell from

513
00:25:32,720 --> 00:25:35,640
Speaker 5: just that description, it's a very long process to get

514
00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:38,760
Speaker 5: these materials into a usable form, and these materials are

515
00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 5: shipped across the world several times, and so what in

516
00:25:41,400 --> 00:25:44,240
Speaker 5: cycle When we looked at the supply chain, we said, okay,

517
00:25:44,280 --> 00:25:46,159
Speaker 5: if our goal as a company and our vision is

518
00:25:46,200 --> 00:25:49,680
Speaker 5: to get as much of these materials into circulation as possible,

519
00:25:49,880 --> 00:25:50,600
Speaker 5: a where can we.

520
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:51,200
Speaker 3: Pull them from?

521
00:25:51,280 --> 00:25:51,440
Speaker 4: Right?

522
00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:55,240
Speaker 3: Recycling is one avenue, but mining more of them but

523
00:25:55,320 --> 00:25:57,760
Speaker 3: in a sustainable way is another. And so we wanted

524
00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:00,720
Speaker 3: to build essentially what a smeltered does us, which is

525
00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:03,520
Speaker 3: take all of this different type of material, but do

526
00:26:03,560 --> 00:26:06,199
Speaker 3: it in a much more sustainable and localized way. So

527
00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:08,800
Speaker 3: instead of having to build a large centralized facility and

528
00:26:08,840 --> 00:26:11,400
Speaker 3: ship all of your materials, regardless of what they are,

529
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:14,480
Speaker 3: to that centralized facility, we wanted to develop a modular

530
00:26:14,560 --> 00:26:17,280
Speaker 3: system that could actually go on site with wherever these

531
00:26:17,280 --> 00:26:18,720
Speaker 3: batteries are or.

532
00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:20,480
Speaker 5: At a mining site, so that you don't have to

533
00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:23,400
Speaker 5: worry about the cost of shipping these because that's usually

534
00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:26,840
Speaker 5: a huge barrier to actually getting these materials refined in

535
00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:30,080
Speaker 5: anything usable, and then the environmental the carbon that is

536
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:32,840
Speaker 5: associated with all that shipping around the world several times.

537
00:26:32,880 --> 00:26:35,480
Speaker 5: And so that's really how we've changed the way that

538
00:26:35,760 --> 00:26:37,639
Speaker 5: not just battery recycling, because I would say a lot

539
00:26:37,680 --> 00:26:40,240
Speaker 5: of the battery recyclers out there, you know, quote unquote

540
00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:43,800
Speaker 5: are vertically integrated, so they're collecting batteries, they're shredding them,

541
00:26:43,840 --> 00:26:46,800
Speaker 5: they're chemically processing them with off the shelf very traditional

542
00:26:46,840 --> 00:26:49,639
Speaker 5: technology and turning them back into battery materials.

543
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:51,159
Speaker 3: And we work with a lot of.

544
00:26:51,160 --> 00:26:53,960
Speaker 5: These folks because we see ourselves as really just the

545
00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:56,280
Speaker 5: technology partner, and so we want to be able to

546
00:26:56,320 --> 00:26:58,560
Speaker 5: help them process with an innovative, you.

547
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:00,040
Speaker 3: Know, much more efficient low car.

548
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:03,040
Speaker 5: Urban technology, and we want to be able to process

549
00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:03,679
Speaker 5: more than.

550
00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:05,640
Speaker 3: Just batteries, because unfortunately, even if we.

551
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:08,080
Speaker 5: Recycle one hundred percent of lithium ion in the next

552
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:10,199
Speaker 5: day ten years, it's not going to quite get us

553
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:13,320
Speaker 5: enough of this raw cobalt and nickel and other materials

554
00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:15,919
Speaker 5: like copper that we need to suffice demands. And so

555
00:27:16,040 --> 00:27:18,280
Speaker 5: what end Cycle is doing is trying to pull from

556
00:27:18,320 --> 00:27:21,239
Speaker 5: all the different industrial scrap resources that we have to

557
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:23,480
Speaker 5: think catalysts from the oil and gas space, or heavy

558
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:25,639
Speaker 5: and nickel. We are looking at the steel industry with

559
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:30,920
Speaker 5: the slag we're because thats the nickel, We're looking at nickel, alloy,

560
00:27:31,119 --> 00:27:34,320
Speaker 5: scrap materials, all of these materials that go unrecycled. That

561
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:37,480
Speaker 5: with our modular unique technology, we can go on site

562
00:27:37,520 --> 00:27:40,080
Speaker 5: and process that into materials that can either go back

563
00:27:40,080 --> 00:27:43,120
Speaker 5: into a battery or into other clean energy technology spaces.

564
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:46,440
Speaker 1: You reference the modular system and the ability to actually

565
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:50,680
Speaker 1: physically place it next to where the work actually needs

566
00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:53,840
Speaker 1: to take place, reducing emissions associated with shipping. Can you

567
00:27:53,880 --> 00:27:56,480
Speaker 1: put it in context in terms of what are the

568
00:27:56,520 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 1: emissions benefits? How big is the carbon benefit of this system?

569
00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:02,120
Speaker 4: Absolutely?

570
00:28:02,160 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 5: So, we had a third party consulting firm help us

571
00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:07,640
Speaker 5: with this to verify that our emission could be much

572
00:28:07,680 --> 00:28:10,199
Speaker 5: much lower, and it's really attributed to the way the

573
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:13,720
Speaker 5: technology work in that we use electricity to produce the

574
00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:17,160
Speaker 5: chemicals that we need versus having them made from fossil

575
00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:19,199
Speaker 5: and then ship to site to be used. And so

576
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:22,120
Speaker 5: that's really where the bulk of our reduction comes from

577
00:28:22,160 --> 00:28:25,040
Speaker 5: in emissions and in terms of numbers, we are forty

578
00:28:25,040 --> 00:28:29,920
Speaker 5: four percent cleaner than traditional hydrometallurgical processing that's used in

579
00:28:30,040 --> 00:28:32,159
Speaker 5: recycling today, and then we can be up to ninety

580
00:28:32,160 --> 00:28:35,840
Speaker 5: two percent lower carbon emissions than the traditional mining route

581
00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:37,320
Speaker 5: for nickel for laterit mining.

582
00:28:38,840 --> 00:28:41,080
Speaker 1: Can we talk about the economics here. We're at a

583
00:28:41,080 --> 00:28:44,400
Speaker 1: point in history where people are definitely interested businesses are

584
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:48,880
Speaker 1: interested in paying a premium for recycled content. But looking

585
00:28:48,880 --> 00:28:51,800
Speaker 1: into the future, this will need to be cost competitive

586
00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:54,400
Speaker 1: in order to get it at wide scale. Where do

587
00:28:54,440 --> 00:28:59,000
Speaker 1: you see the cost competitiveness now compared to virgin materials

588
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:00,560
Speaker 1: and where do you see it going in the future.

589
00:29:00,720 --> 00:29:03,440
Speaker 5: So when we started this business, we knew right because

590
00:29:03,440 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 5: these centralized facilities have been around for decades, right centuries

591
00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:09,120
Speaker 5: in some cases, and we knew that we needed to

592
00:29:09,320 --> 00:29:12,520
Speaker 5: at least be cost competitive or have the same essentially

593
00:29:12,600 --> 00:29:15,400
Speaker 5: treatment charges for those familiar with the industry that a

594
00:29:15,440 --> 00:29:18,200
Speaker 5: smelter would, because that's really what we're trying to replace here.

595
00:29:18,400 --> 00:29:20,760
Speaker 5: So we are very proud to say that even in

596
00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 5: our first facility, we will be at cost with what's

597
00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:26,880
Speaker 5: smelting charges for treatment charges, and so this is a

598
00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 5: very cost competitive solution with the additional benefit of the

599
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:32,480
Speaker 5: carbon savings. Right, So we're not even accounting for the

600
00:29:32,520 --> 00:29:34,680
Speaker 5: premiums or other things that we might see that are

601
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:37,800
Speaker 5: coming out of the regulatory environment in Europe or the

602
00:29:37,840 --> 00:29:40,080
Speaker 5: Inflation Reduction Act here in the US. Right, we really

603
00:29:40,120 --> 00:29:42,520
Speaker 5: wanted to basically stand on our own two feet and

604
00:29:42,640 --> 00:29:46,600
Speaker 5: show that we can essentially shrink what a centralized facility

605
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:48,800
Speaker 5: looks like but have the same unit economics, right because

606
00:29:48,800 --> 00:29:51,600
Speaker 5: one of the major issues of having a centralized facility

607
00:29:51,600 --> 00:29:53,080
Speaker 5: here in the US is that we don't.

608
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:54,720
Speaker 3: Have large assets to pull from.

609
00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:57,240
Speaker 5: So typically these smelters are set up next to a

610
00:29:57,360 --> 00:30:00,560
Speaker 5: very large I think fifty plus year mind to justify

611
00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:03,000
Speaker 5: the capital expense to build one of these, which is

612
00:30:03,040 --> 00:30:05,440
Speaker 5: typically in the billions of dollars, and we wanted to

613
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:07,880
Speaker 5: show that we can have the same unit economics excuse me,

614
00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:10,800
Speaker 5: with a modular system that can process a fraction about

615
00:30:10,840 --> 00:30:13,360
Speaker 5: these other facilities are built to handle, but then to

616
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 5: be able to scale over time. So we really looked

617
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:18,320
Speaker 5: at other industries that have modular systems and tried to

618
00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:21,959
Speaker 5: mimic that to grow with the battery recycling industry, for example,

619
00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:24,880
Speaker 5: because we don't need something that can process sixty thousand

620
00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:25,800
Speaker 5: metric tons a year.

621
00:30:25,880 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 3: We need something that can process about five thousand metric

622
00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:28,640
Speaker 3: tons a year.

623
00:30:28,720 --> 00:30:31,720
Speaker 5: We don't want that stranded access capacity, and so that's

624
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:33,840
Speaker 5: really where we think we have achieved.

625
00:30:33,920 --> 00:30:34,880
Speaker 3: What we've set out to do.

626
00:30:34,960 --> 00:30:37,600
Speaker 5: Is showing that the unit economics work at this scale

627
00:30:37,720 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 5: as well as at a large scale if we were

628
00:30:39,400 --> 00:30:40,440
Speaker 5: to go to a mining site.

629
00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:44,840
Speaker 2: So you mentioned the first facilities, and so where are

630
00:30:44,880 --> 00:30:47,760
Speaker 2: you on the commercialization journey? Where are you now?

631
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:51,960
Speaker 5: We have our first facility that will be under commissioning

632
00:30:52,000 --> 00:30:55,240
Speaker 5: right now, will be up and running and producing nickel

633
00:30:55,520 --> 00:30:57,880
Speaker 5: mixed hydroxide product, which is a nickel product that can

634
00:30:57,920 --> 00:30:59,920
Speaker 5: be used in the battery industry in a variety of

635
00:31:00,040 --> 00:31:02,920
Speaker 5: other nickel heavy industries that will be running at the

636
00:31:03,040 --> 00:31:05,320
Speaker 5: end of Q two of twenty twenty four.

637
00:31:05,480 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 3: So we're very excited. We'll be the first nickel refinery

638
00:31:07,800 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 3: in the US and so we'll.

639
00:31:08,800 --> 00:31:11,360
Speaker 5: Be processing end of life materials at the facility and

640
00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:12,160
Speaker 5: it's in Ohio.

641
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:12,880
Speaker 6: Wow.

642
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:16,680
Speaker 2: And what's coming up next the side of the new facilities.

643
00:31:16,720 --> 00:31:19,760
Speaker 2: I saw in the press potentially a B round that

644
00:31:19,800 --> 00:31:20,560
Speaker 2: you are working on.

645
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:22,400
Speaker 3: Yes, So as.

646
00:31:22,200 --> 00:31:25,120
Speaker 5: A pre revenue company, right, we're always fundraising and so

647
00:31:25,280 --> 00:31:28,520
Speaker 5: we are excited to be expanding in terms of projects.

648
00:31:28,520 --> 00:31:31,560
Speaker 5: So we hope to deploy several other projects after this

649
00:31:31,600 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 5: first Ohio facility. It has been running not just here

650
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:36,520
Speaker 5: in North America, but in Europe as well, and so

651
00:31:36,560 --> 00:31:40,080
Speaker 5: we're in the process of looking and scouting for locations

652
00:31:40,080 --> 00:31:42,720
Speaker 5: in Europe to start growing our business over there as well.

653
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:45,440
Speaker 5: So that's really the upcoming exciting things I should say

654
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:46,320
Speaker 5: for Encycle.

655
00:31:46,680 --> 00:31:48,200
Speaker 1: And one of the last things I want to do

656
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:50,760
Speaker 1: is do a bit of a definition game, because I

657
00:31:50,800 --> 00:31:52,440
Speaker 1: find that as soon as you start to get into

658
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:54,920
Speaker 1: any industry, there's a lot of different terms. Certainly a

659
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:57,480
Speaker 1: lot of different acronyms, but a lot of different terms

660
00:31:57,520 --> 00:32:01,120
Speaker 1: that not everyone is familiar with. So can you start

661
00:32:01,200 --> 00:32:04,800
Speaker 1: by explaining black mass, why and what is it?

662
00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 5: Absolutely I agree with you there's a lot of interesting

663
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:12,720
Speaker 5: terminology in this space. So black mass is basically a powder.

664
00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:15,720
Speaker 5: You can think of it as the product of shredded batteries.

665
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:18,480
Speaker 5: So lithiumine batteries come in, whether it's from an ev

666
00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:21,880
Speaker 5: PAC or it's from a self owner laptop, it's dismantled

667
00:32:21,880 --> 00:32:25,560
Speaker 5: in some capacity. It's then shredded and mechanically separated. And

668
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 5: so the black mass is really the graphite from the

669
00:32:28,040 --> 00:32:30,520
Speaker 5: and outside of the battery. Then you have, depending on

670
00:32:30,560 --> 00:32:32,760
Speaker 5: what the chemistry is, you have the cobalt, the nickel,

671
00:32:32,840 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 5: the manganese.

672
00:32:33,560 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 3: You might have a little bit of copper in there.

673
00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:38,760
Speaker 5: So it really, I mean, it's a very generic name

674
00:32:38,800 --> 00:32:40,520
Speaker 5: in that it really does look like black mass.

675
00:32:40,520 --> 00:32:41,800
Speaker 3: It looks like black powder.

676
00:32:42,080 --> 00:32:45,160
Speaker 1: It's putting the name on the tin. The other the

677
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:49,080
Speaker 1: other terms that are used here, and you mentioned earlier hydrometallurgy,

678
00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:52,800
Speaker 1: which is one of the incumbent ways of actually going

679
00:32:52,840 --> 00:32:56,600
Speaker 1: through this chemical process. Your company is using electro extraction,

680
00:32:56,800 --> 00:32:58,440
Speaker 1: but what is pyro metallurgy.

681
00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 5: So pyrometallurgy is is where they use heat. So as

682
00:33:02,840 --> 00:33:06,000
Speaker 5: the name suggests, they you typically use very high temperatures

683
00:33:06,120 --> 00:33:09,480
Speaker 5: and sometimes high pressures to really melt or burn a

684
00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:12,480
Speaker 5: lot of these materials to separate out the metals from

685
00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:14,640
Speaker 5: maybe the rest of the materials. So, for example, for

686
00:33:14,680 --> 00:33:17,560
Speaker 5: black mass, you can essentially burn away the graphite and

687
00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:19,520
Speaker 5: you'd be left with the metals. And so that's a

688
00:33:19,560 --> 00:33:22,520
Speaker 5: typical method in which black mass is processed today.

689
00:33:22,640 --> 00:33:26,959
Speaker 1: It is CCS technology used for something like pyrometallurgy. Are

690
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:29,720
Speaker 1: there other things going on that you're seeing as ways

691
00:33:29,720 --> 00:33:33,440
Speaker 1: to decarbonize that are essentially maybe even competitors to your technology.

692
00:33:33,680 --> 00:33:36,200
Speaker 3: I think we're seeing a lot of interesting technology come

693
00:33:36,240 --> 00:33:38,760
Speaker 3: out because again, as they mentioned before, this industry really

694
00:33:38,800 --> 00:33:42,520
Speaker 3: hasn't seen innovation in many, many, many decades, if ever,

695
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:44,320
Speaker 3: and so I think a lot of folks are trying

696
00:33:44,320 --> 00:33:46,440
Speaker 3: to figure out a way to espucially, what we're doing

697
00:33:46,520 --> 00:33:50,160
Speaker 3: is modularize the system because they're realizing that, hey, the

698
00:33:50,800 --> 00:33:53,600
Speaker 3: weights that we're going after are just simply not all

699
00:33:53,640 --> 00:33:54,800
Speaker 3: aggravated in one place.

700
00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:55,040
Speaker 4: Right.

701
00:33:55,080 --> 00:33:58,000
Speaker 5: The transportation is a huge, huge limitation, and you really

702
00:33:58,040 --> 00:34:01,120
Speaker 5: have to get to large scale for theseralized facilities to

703
00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:02,280
Speaker 5: operate profitably.

704
00:34:02,360 --> 00:34:03,240
Speaker 3: And so you're seeing a lot.

705
00:34:03,160 --> 00:34:05,960
Speaker 5: Of interesting plays on hydrometallurgy to a lot of different

706
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:09,240
Speaker 5: new solvent extraction technology, which is really the very very

707
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:11,600
Speaker 5: end point where they use lots of solvents to pull

708
00:34:11,640 --> 00:34:14,440
Speaker 5: out these materials in their purest form. You're seeing modularized

709
00:34:14,520 --> 00:34:17,279
Speaker 5: versions of that. You're seeing some new takes on how

710
00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:19,840
Speaker 5: we do the front end of hydrometallurgy, so the different

711
00:34:19,880 --> 00:34:22,480
Speaker 5: acids and combinations of acids that you can use to

712
00:34:22,520 --> 00:34:24,719
Speaker 5: make that's a cleaner process. And so again, I don't

713
00:34:24,719 --> 00:34:26,719
Speaker 5: know if we necessarily see them as competitors, because I

714
00:34:26,719 --> 00:34:29,120
Speaker 5: think we will need all of these solutions to really

715
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:30,640
Speaker 5: decarbonize this entire industry.

716
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:32,719
Speaker 3: Because we think about our market as the.

717
00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:35,240
Speaker 5: Metals industry for like Cobalt and Nike at least today,

718
00:34:35,320 --> 00:34:38,439
Speaker 5: and these are massive industries right and there's a lot

719
00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:40,960
Speaker 5: of room for many players. But we hope to be

720
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:43,960
Speaker 5: the refining partner that helps with at least that first

721
00:34:44,280 --> 00:34:47,840
Speaker 5: refining process which is replacing the pyro metallurgy and the

722
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:51,040
Speaker 5: smell things I mentioned before, Whereas there'll be players downstream

723
00:34:51,080 --> 00:34:53,000
Speaker 5: from us that will take the material that we produce

724
00:34:53,120 --> 00:34:55,080
Speaker 5: and refine it even further. And so I think there's

725
00:34:55,120 --> 00:34:56,520
Speaker 5: a place for all of us, I think, in this

726
00:34:56,680 --> 00:34:58,400
Speaker 5: value chain, and I think that's how we're going to

727
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:00,160
Speaker 5: truly decarbonize, is working to get.

728
00:35:00,080 --> 00:35:02,600
Speaker 1: Other Megan, it's so great to have you here today,

729
00:35:02,600 --> 00:35:05,520
Speaker 1: and it's always exciting to talk to innovators about what's

730
00:35:05,560 --> 00:35:08,640
Speaker 1: coming up next. We are all going to be watching

731
00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:11,239
Speaker 1: end Cycle and thank you for explaining the technology.

732
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:13,200
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you so much for having me on today.

733
00:35:13,239 --> 00:35:13,799
Speaker 3: It's been great.

734
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:23,520
Speaker 1: And now onto our third and final interview with Tim Johnson,

735
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:27,319
Speaker 1: the co founder and executive chairman of life Cycle. Life

736
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:31,719
Speaker 1: Cycle specializes in lithium battery and resource recovery using their

737
00:35:31,760 --> 00:35:35,840
Speaker 1: spoken hub facilities, which also create a secondary supply of

738
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:43,800
Speaker 1: battery grade metals. Tim, thank you very much for joining

739
00:35:43,800 --> 00:35:44,400
Speaker 1: the show today.

740
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:45,719
Speaker 6: Thank you very much for having me.

741
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:49,040
Speaker 1: Let's start at the beginning of your story. Could you

742
00:35:49,120 --> 00:35:52,200
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about how you came into

743
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:53,480
Speaker 1: the battery industry.

744
00:35:53,680 --> 00:35:56,960
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely so. My background is a mechanical engineer, and

745
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:01,520
Speaker 6: so I sawed out my life actually within the metallurgical world,

746
00:36:01,719 --> 00:36:03,919
Speaker 6: and I was very fortunate back in the late two

747
00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:07,360
Speaker 6: thousands to get involved in the development of a lithium

748
00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:10,520
Speaker 6: project actually in China. It was the first fully continuous

749
00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:13,360
Speaker 6: lithium carbonate plant that was built. And then on the

750
00:36:13,400 --> 00:36:16,120
Speaker 6: back of that, we built a especially lithium practice and

751
00:36:16,160 --> 00:36:19,240
Speaker 6: so started working with clients and helping them develop lithium

752
00:36:19,239 --> 00:36:21,759
Speaker 6: assets all over the world. So it has been, you know,

753
00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:25,360
Speaker 6: a journey from was called it traditional mining and refining

754
00:36:25,560 --> 00:36:28,000
Speaker 6: to today recycling, which is really what I focus on

755
00:36:28,280 --> 00:36:30,840
Speaker 6: and taking the skill set from one and applying it

756
00:36:30,880 --> 00:36:31,279
Speaker 6: to the other.

757
00:36:31,640 --> 00:36:34,240
Speaker 2: So can you take us through how do we actually

758
00:36:34,280 --> 00:36:36,840
Speaker 2: recycle batteries? What's the process?

759
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:41,359
Speaker 6: Absolutely, there's essentially two steps to recycling batteries today when

760
00:36:41,360 --> 00:36:44,960
Speaker 6: we were talking general terms, it's pre processing and post processing.

761
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:48,279
Speaker 6: And the pre processing step is all about turning batteries,

762
00:36:48,680 --> 00:36:52,279
Speaker 6: all different forms of lithium mine batteries essentially into an

763
00:36:52,360 --> 00:36:55,120
Speaker 6: isolated product which we call black mass, which is a

764
00:36:55,239 --> 00:36:59,480
Speaker 6: very unimaginative explanation of what the anode and cathode materials

765
00:36:59,600 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 6: from within in the lithium mind batteries look like. We

766
00:37:02,120 --> 00:37:05,120
Speaker 6: then take that forward into the post processing step or

767
00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:08,080
Speaker 6: the refining step, where we're taking the black mass and

768
00:37:08,120 --> 00:37:11,160
Speaker 6: now we're converting it back into usable materials that can

769
00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:14,319
Speaker 6: go back into batteries. And there's a whole range of

770
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 6: different technologies. We as LFE cycle have a bespoke set

771
00:37:17,600 --> 00:37:20,839
Speaker 6: of technologies that we developed for these applications, but there's

772
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:23,560
Speaker 6: a wide variety of technologies that exist out there in industry.

773
00:37:23,960 --> 00:37:27,240
Speaker 2: So what's that unique about kind of life cycle approach?

774
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 2: What's unique about your ways of recycling batteries.

775
00:37:31,120 --> 00:37:34,000
Speaker 6: So with our pre processing facilities, which we call spokes,

776
00:37:34,440 --> 00:37:37,240
Speaker 6: we're able to process any form of lithium mind battery,

777
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:41,719
Speaker 6: regardless of full factor or chemistry. And the key aspects

778
00:37:41,719 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 6: of what we do with the pre processing facilities, which

779
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:46,440
Speaker 6: is different to the rest of the industry, is that

780
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:49,680
Speaker 6: we're able to process them without having to discharge or

781
00:37:49,719 --> 00:37:52,759
Speaker 6: disassemble them. And that's a really important fact when you're

782
00:37:52,760 --> 00:37:55,440
Speaker 6: looking at how to scale these industries and how you

783
00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:59,279
Speaker 6: go from processing killograms and materials to thousands of tons

784
00:37:59,280 --> 00:38:01,759
Speaker 6: of materials, which is what we do today. And we

785
00:38:01,800 --> 00:38:05,200
Speaker 6: can do that because we developed a process called submoge threading,

786
00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:09,720
Speaker 6: and submoge treading is a novel way of processing batteries

787
00:38:09,719 --> 00:38:12,440
Speaker 6: in a water based system. And what we're able to

788
00:38:12,480 --> 00:38:15,359
Speaker 6: do is we're able to deal with three characteristics that

789
00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:18,480
Speaker 6: we're concerned about when processing with your mind batteries. One

790
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:21,000
Speaker 6: is we're able to mitigate the potential for fire, the

791
00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:23,960
Speaker 6: second is that we can handle the energy that's released

792
00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 6: from the battery as are being broken down in a

793
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:29,640
Speaker 6: safe way by cooling the system effectively. And then third,

794
00:38:29,680 --> 00:38:32,200
Speaker 6: we're able to chemically treat the electrolyte, which is a

795
00:38:32,200 --> 00:38:36,160
Speaker 6: potential harmful compound that exists within these lithium ion batteries.

796
00:38:36,320 --> 00:38:39,200
Speaker 6: And we do all of this without any thermal processing.

797
00:38:39,520 --> 00:38:43,400
Speaker 6: We don't have any affluent wastewater discharge from the sites.

798
00:38:43,760 --> 00:38:46,400
Speaker 6: You compare this to how lithium ion batteries have been

799
00:38:46,520 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 6: processed traditionally. Typically, what would happen is that these materials

800
00:38:50,800 --> 00:38:54,360
Speaker 6: would come to a facility, they would be discharged, dismantled,

801
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:57,960
Speaker 6: and then they go through some form of thermal processing.

802
00:38:58,239 --> 00:39:00,319
Speaker 6: And one of the challenges that we are then fight

803
00:39:00,400 --> 00:39:04,000
Speaker 6: and addressed was, well, where these thermal processes, you're effectively

804
00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:06,839
Speaker 6: burning off the plastics and the electrolytes and the other

805
00:39:06,960 --> 00:39:09,919
Speaker 6: organic compounds within the battery. And if you think about

806
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:11,719
Speaker 6: why are we doing this in the first place, the

807
00:39:11,760 --> 00:39:13,640
Speaker 6: reason why we're doing this in the first place is

808
00:39:13,680 --> 00:39:16,719
Speaker 6: to support a more sustainable future, and we didn't see

809
00:39:16,760 --> 00:39:19,839
Speaker 6: that as being congruent with the industry in which we

810
00:39:19,840 --> 00:39:22,040
Speaker 6: were trying to help support and build, and that's why

811
00:39:22,040 --> 00:39:25,839
Speaker 6: we went to our own preprocessing technology. When it came

812
00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:29,080
Speaker 6: to the refining and the post processing side of the business.

813
00:39:29,320 --> 00:39:32,960
Speaker 6: What we realized there is that there is significant challenges

814
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:35,799
Speaker 6: with building and scaling up any sort of operation, and

815
00:39:35,840 --> 00:39:37,839
Speaker 6: so the best thing that we could do was to

816
00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:41,319
Speaker 6: take lessons and technologies that existed in the mining and

817
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:45,200
Speaker 6: refining world and then apply it to the recycling of

818
00:39:45,239 --> 00:39:47,000
Speaker 6: the your mind batteries. So if you look at our

819
00:39:47,080 --> 00:39:50,960
Speaker 6: hub process, our refining process, it's essentially a series of

820
00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:54,320
Speaker 6: steps that are done in the tritional mining and refining world,

821
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:57,440
Speaker 6: but brought together in a novel way. And why novel

822
00:39:57,560 --> 00:40:01,719
Speaker 6: because in our Earth's crust today, we don't nickel, cobalt

823
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:05,880
Speaker 6: and lipya coexisting in singular deposits. They're formed in different

824
00:40:05,920 --> 00:40:09,640
Speaker 6: ways and from a geological perspective, but they are processed

825
00:40:09,840 --> 00:40:13,959
Speaker 6: using similar chemistries in different operations, and so we're able

826
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:16,799
Speaker 6: to bring the knowledge and understanding of how these two

827
00:40:16,840 --> 00:40:20,440
Speaker 6: different segments exist that bring them together, and that's ultimately

828
00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:22,520
Speaker 6: how we developed our refining technology.

829
00:40:22,920 --> 00:40:26,200
Speaker 1: These are important innovations in what is likely to be

830
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:29,040
Speaker 1: a growing market. B and E F research would certainly

831
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:32,440
Speaker 1: point to the need for more batteries for stationary storage

832
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:34,319
Speaker 1: and for vehicles. So there's going to be a lot

833
00:40:34,360 --> 00:40:36,560
Speaker 1: of batteries to be recycled. And what I want to

834
00:40:36,600 --> 00:40:39,359
Speaker 1: know is, with the innovations that you have come up with,

835
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:42,480
Speaker 1: how much growth do you expect seeing for this type

836
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:46,040
Speaker 1: of technology and this application and basically how big do

837
00:40:46,080 --> 00:40:47,200
Speaker 1: you see this market getting.

838
00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:50,440
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean we're just starting to scratch the surface.

839
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:54,520
Speaker 6: This decade of growth is really being driven by the

840
00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:58,520
Speaker 6: production of new cells and new batteries that are going

841
00:40:58,560 --> 00:41:02,279
Speaker 6: into particularly the electric vehicle and end of storage industries

842
00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:04,840
Speaker 6: around the world. So you can see the recycling demand

843
00:41:05,160 --> 00:41:08,760
Speaker 6: through to twenty thirty largely being associated with that. However,

844
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:12,040
Speaker 6: we're now into this phase where we're starting to see

845
00:41:12,120 --> 00:41:15,359
Speaker 6: early generations of electric vehicles reach the end of their

846
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:19,120
Speaker 6: useful and practical lives as vehicles, and now there's the

847
00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:21,799
Speaker 6: opportunity to start to recycle those ends of what we

848
00:41:21,840 --> 00:41:24,719
Speaker 6: call end of life materials from these batteries. And so

849
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 6: if we look forward, you know, we look at last

850
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:30,239
Speaker 6: cycle at in twenty thirty and we say, okay, so Rochester,

851
00:41:30,560 --> 00:41:33,680
Speaker 6: a hub in Rochester is able to process thirty five

852
00:41:33,719 --> 00:41:35,880
Speaker 6: thousand times per year of black mass. That's not going

853
00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:37,640
Speaker 6: to mean a lot to a lot of people. You know,

854
00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:41,040
Speaker 6: what that actually equates to is about ninety thousand electric

855
00:41:41,160 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 6: vehicles worth of battery materials. And so for us, we

856
00:41:45,080 --> 00:41:48,280
Speaker 6: say that that's probably around ten percent of the total

857
00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:51,719
Speaker 6: addressable market for North America by twenty thirty. So even

858
00:41:51,760 --> 00:41:54,560
Speaker 6: though it's a very large facility, the largest that's ever

859
00:41:54,600 --> 00:41:57,960
Speaker 6: been built in the Western world, it's still relatively small

860
00:41:58,120 --> 00:42:00,440
Speaker 6: when you fast forward just a few years. And then

861
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:02,399
Speaker 6: if you look at the size of the market by

862
00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:05,759
Speaker 6: twenty forty, it's once again it's an auder of magnitude

863
00:42:05,920 --> 00:42:09,279
Speaker 6: or multiple order magnitude bigger again, because now what we're

864
00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:12,200
Speaker 6: seeing in the next decade is really this very fast

865
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:15,040
Speaker 6: growth of end of life materials that are coming into

866
00:42:15,080 --> 00:42:17,680
Speaker 6: the market. As what we've seen is the uprising of

867
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:20,359
Speaker 6: electric vehicles in the first half of this decade start

868
00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:22,680
Speaker 6: to reach the end of their life in the next decade.

869
00:42:22,800 --> 00:42:25,480
Speaker 1: And do you think there'll be a dominant technology approach

870
00:42:25,600 --> 00:42:28,640
Speaker 1: to actually processing these batteries or do you think that'll

871
00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:31,239
Speaker 1: be a number of different approaches that are fit for

872
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:33,080
Speaker 1: purpose in specific regions.

873
00:42:33,440 --> 00:42:35,719
Speaker 6: Yeah, and so I think that there's always going to

874
00:42:35,760 --> 00:42:38,440
Speaker 6: be a variety. We see this in the base metal

875
00:42:38,680 --> 00:42:40,640
Speaker 6: world as well. I wouldn't say that there's going to

876
00:42:40,719 --> 00:42:46,160
Speaker 6: be one technology that trumps another technology out right. What

877
00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:49,120
Speaker 6: I would say is there's definitely trends. And what we

878
00:42:49,200 --> 00:42:52,200
Speaker 6: see is the trend for particularly on the refining side,

879
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:55,359
Speaker 6: is definitely towards what we call hydromenological or the wet

880
00:42:55,440 --> 00:42:58,720
Speaker 6: chemistry approach, and most of the new developments are really

881
00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:02,760
Speaker 6: focused on use this style of technology or this family

882
00:43:02,800 --> 00:43:06,480
Speaker 6: of technologies in order to process black mass. On the

883
00:43:06,520 --> 00:43:10,200
Speaker 6: pre processing side, what we're starting to see is, I

884
00:43:10,239 --> 00:43:14,640
Speaker 6: guess a convergence into really three key technology groups. You

885
00:43:14,680 --> 00:43:17,800
Speaker 6: have the live cycle which develop the submerge threading technology

886
00:43:17,800 --> 00:43:20,000
Speaker 6: which I was talking about, And you have the traditional

887
00:43:20,040 --> 00:43:23,920
Speaker 6: groups which will continue to thermally treat the amound batteries.

888
00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:26,320
Speaker 6: And then you have a third group which is focused

889
00:43:26,360 --> 00:43:28,799
Speaker 6: on what we call a Nert treading, which is effectively

890
00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:32,160
Speaker 6: using a Nert gas to reduce the atmosphere and reduce

891
00:43:32,200 --> 00:43:36,000
Speaker 6: the oxygen within the system or they're processing the batteries.

892
00:43:36,040 --> 00:43:39,520
Speaker 6: And I think those three technologies, based on region, based

893
00:43:39,560 --> 00:43:42,919
Speaker 6: on a number of different factors, will continue to coexist

894
00:43:43,160 --> 00:43:44,840
Speaker 6: in that pre processing world.

895
00:43:45,360 --> 00:43:49,240
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about market conditions. It's twenty

896
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:51,520
Speaker 1: twenty three has been a pretty turbulent year for some

897
00:43:51,600 --> 00:43:53,920
Speaker 1: clean tech companies, and I want to know what you

898
00:43:53,960 --> 00:43:56,920
Speaker 1: think the future holds in twenty twenty four and beyond

899
00:43:57,040 --> 00:43:59,240
Speaker 1: for clean tech innovators like life Cycle.

900
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:03,400
Speaker 6: I mean, this is always a challenge of being part

901
00:44:03,520 --> 00:44:08,759
Speaker 6: of a revolutionary movement, and we've seen this in the

902
00:44:08,840 --> 00:44:11,399
Speaker 6: lithium world, we've seen it in the clean tech world,

903
00:44:11,480 --> 00:44:13,799
Speaker 6: and we'll continue to see this as there will be

904
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:17,799
Speaker 6: ebbs and flows associated with the growth in this industry.

905
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:19,719
Speaker 6: But one thing is for sure, I mean, if you

906
00:44:19,920 --> 00:44:23,040
Speaker 6: distill it down to the basics, is that we need

907
00:44:23,080 --> 00:44:26,600
Speaker 6: to decarbonize our economies as much as we possibly can.

908
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:30,080
Speaker 6: And electrification, whether or it's through electric vehicles or energy

909
00:44:30,120 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 6: storage and we associated with renewable power generation is a

910
00:44:33,680 --> 00:44:36,920
Speaker 6: clear way to be able to start to address some

911
00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:40,080
Speaker 6: of these challenges. And so for us, we have strong

912
00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:43,640
Speaker 6: believers that there's going to be continued growth now in

913
00:44:43,360 --> 00:44:47,759
Speaker 6: this market. We are still seeing significant investments being made

914
00:44:47,960 --> 00:44:51,680
Speaker 6: across the value chain that support the recycling industry but

915
00:44:51,760 --> 00:44:55,960
Speaker 6: also support the development of electric vehicles. And energy storage systems.

916
00:44:56,120 --> 00:44:58,840
Speaker 6: So twenty twenty four for us, we see as a

917
00:44:58,920 --> 00:45:03,080
Speaker 6: year that will continue to press through and continue to develop.

918
00:45:03,280 --> 00:45:05,239
Speaker 6: We really see, and we've been talking about this for

919
00:45:05,280 --> 00:45:08,600
Speaker 6: a long time, twenty twenty five is almost a bit

920
00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:12,320
Speaker 6: of a magical year in some regards for this industry

921
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:16,200
Speaker 6: because there is so much new production that is due

922
00:45:16,239 --> 00:45:19,200
Speaker 6: to come online in twenty twenty five, and if you

923
00:45:19,320 --> 00:45:22,439
Speaker 6: look forward, even if some of that slips, there's still

924
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:24,719
Speaker 6: going to be a lot of new production come into

925
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:27,640
Speaker 6: the market, which means new vehicles, which I think gets

926
00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:32,000
Speaker 6: consumers excited about electric vehicles and the possibilities that exist

927
00:45:32,120 --> 00:45:35,160
Speaker 6: around that. It's going to see increased demand for the

928
00:45:35,239 --> 00:45:38,680
Speaker 6: materials that go into making them on the cell level side,

929
00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:41,600
Speaker 6: but then of course also all the raw materials associated

930
00:45:41,640 --> 00:45:45,280
Speaker 6: with it. And then like anything that anything that's manufacturing

931
00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:47,640
Speaker 6: or consumer based, there's going to be the waste component,

932
00:45:47,680 --> 00:45:50,520
Speaker 6: and that's where life Cycle comes in to support on

933
00:45:50,600 --> 00:45:53,799
Speaker 6: the recycling side. So we're very excited about the developments

934
00:45:53,840 --> 00:45:55,680
Speaker 6: over the next couple of years and beyond.

935
00:45:56,160 --> 00:45:59,960
Speaker 2: Can I see what have you learned from your church

936
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:04,360
Speaker 2: so far with life cycle it and in particular about

937
00:46:04,400 --> 00:46:07,520
Speaker 2: the challenge of kind of moving from something that works

938
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:10,720
Speaker 2: in the lab to first of a kind commercial plant

939
00:46:10,960 --> 00:46:11,839
Speaker 2: for climate tech.

940
00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:15,480
Speaker 6: Yeah. Absolutely. I think that one of the things you

941
00:46:15,560 --> 00:46:18,600
Speaker 6: have to be open to when you're going through any

942
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:21,839
Speaker 6: sort of development cycle is the opportunity to improve and

943
00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:26,080
Speaker 6: continuously develop. I look at our pre processing, our spoke technology.

944
00:46:26,360 --> 00:46:30,040
Speaker 6: We started the company in twenty sixteen. In twenty sixteen,

945
00:46:30,080 --> 00:46:33,239
Speaker 6: there was very very little interest for recycling of with

946
00:46:33,320 --> 00:46:35,200
Speaker 6: your Mind batteries, but we did a lot of work

947
00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:38,640
Speaker 6: going into twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen doing lab work,

948
00:46:38,719 --> 00:46:42,360
Speaker 6: doing piloting, trying to understand the basic physical problems that

949
00:46:42,360 --> 00:46:44,680
Speaker 6: we were trying to solve. We then rolled out our

950
00:46:44,719 --> 00:46:48,799
Speaker 6: first commercial plant in twenty nineteen and subsequently in short

951
00:46:48,920 --> 00:46:52,120
Speaker 6: order our second commercial spoke process in facility. Today we

952
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:55,640
Speaker 6: have five around the world, and what we've seen is

953
00:46:55,719 --> 00:46:58,400
Speaker 6: every time that we've rolled a new plant out today

954
00:46:58,440 --> 00:47:01,520
Speaker 6: we're on what we call the generation three technology of

955
00:47:01,600 --> 00:47:05,000
Speaker 6: our commercial plants, We've made substantial improvements, and so I

956
00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:08,719
Speaker 6: think that this is something that is really important for

957
00:47:08,840 --> 00:47:13,719
Speaker 6: all the stakeholders associated with these new technologies and being

958
00:47:13,719 --> 00:47:18,600
Speaker 6: associated with us, from financing to public, to regional and

959
00:47:18,680 --> 00:47:22,200
Speaker 6: community stakeholders is that there is this evolution process and

960
00:47:22,239 --> 00:47:25,040
Speaker 6: it's important that we embrace that process to ensure that

961
00:47:25,080 --> 00:47:27,680
Speaker 6: we get the best possible outcome. And we see that

962
00:47:27,680 --> 00:47:30,279
Speaker 6: that's something that we've really done quite well as a

963
00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:32,600
Speaker 6: life cycle. You look at what we're able to do today.

964
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:35,600
Speaker 6: We can process full electric vehicle battery packs at any

965
00:47:35,640 --> 00:47:38,120
Speaker 6: state of charge. That is something that we could only

966
00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:40,640
Speaker 6: have dreamt about when we rolled out our first commercial

967
00:47:40,680 --> 00:47:43,399
Speaker 6: plant back in twenty nineteen. So we've come a long

968
00:47:43,440 --> 00:47:45,239
Speaker 6: way and we've only been able to do that through

969
00:47:45,239 --> 00:47:47,279
Speaker 6: this continuous improvement process.

970
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:51,279
Speaker 2: And from your experience, is there a balance between recycling

971
00:47:51,360 --> 00:47:54,960
Speaker 2: batteries locally close to the clients and feedstill and so

972
00:47:55,040 --> 00:47:59,520
Speaker 2: on versus like large facilities with economy of scale. What's

973
00:47:59,520 --> 00:48:01,280
Speaker 2: the kind of magic formula.

974
00:48:01,640 --> 00:48:04,600
Speaker 6: Yeah, So, so we see that on the pre processing side,

975
00:48:04,600 --> 00:48:07,400
Speaker 6: on the spots side, there is a significant benefit of

976
00:48:07,520 --> 00:48:10,759
Speaker 6: having those facilities close to where the battery materials are

977
00:48:10,760 --> 00:48:12,880
Speaker 6: being generated. And it's really driven by a couple of

978
00:48:12,920 --> 00:48:16,000
Speaker 6: key factors. First of all, it's quite expensive and there

979
00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:18,759
Speaker 6: is a level of risk associated with the transportation of

980
00:48:18,800 --> 00:48:21,720
Speaker 6: them and batteries. So if you can minimize that distance

981
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:24,320
Speaker 6: you can reduce that cost and you can reduce that risk.

982
00:48:24,560 --> 00:48:27,239
Speaker 6: And at the same time, from a processing plant perspective,

983
00:48:27,280 --> 00:48:30,480
Speaker 6: the equipment that we're using, even at a let's call

984
00:48:30,520 --> 00:48:34,000
Speaker 6: it a regional level, is largely we're very close to

985
00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:37,919
Speaker 6: where the mass capacity of the equipment that you can

986
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:42,440
Speaker 6: purchase without going fully customized is able to operate within.

987
00:48:42,680 --> 00:48:45,520
Speaker 6: So you're not actually losing significant economies of scale on

988
00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:49,520
Speaker 6: the preprocessing side. It differs, however, when you come to

989
00:48:49,120 --> 00:48:51,600
Speaker 6: the refining side, to the hub side of it for

990
00:48:52,040 --> 00:48:54,839
Speaker 6: life cycle, and we see that it's really important at

991
00:48:54,840 --> 00:48:57,440
Speaker 6: that point in time that you do have economies of scale,

992
00:48:57,520 --> 00:49:00,720
Speaker 6: both from a technical perspective with equipment also just because

993
00:49:00,760 --> 00:49:04,240
Speaker 6: of the fixed overhead and management of those style assets

994
00:49:04,320 --> 00:49:07,279
Speaker 6: the operating costs associated with it. To be efficient, you

995
00:49:07,360 --> 00:49:09,640
Speaker 6: need to have scale. And the benefit is is that

996
00:49:09,680 --> 00:49:11,839
Speaker 6: by the time we've put the barterer of materials through

997
00:49:12,040 --> 00:49:15,200
Speaker 6: the spoke facilities and you've generated the black mass. Black

998
00:49:15,280 --> 00:49:19,320
Speaker 6: mass itself is a non flammable, easy to transport material

999
00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:22,600
Speaker 6: by comparison to tour battery, so you've now dealt with

1000
00:49:22,640 --> 00:49:26,840
Speaker 6: the risk factor. It's significantly cheaper to move that material

1001
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:29,680
Speaker 6: and so therefore you've dealt with the risks, you've dealt

1002
00:49:29,719 --> 00:49:31,800
Speaker 6: with the costs, and you're just put in the scale

1003
00:49:31,920 --> 00:49:33,960
Speaker 6: ultimately where it needs to be. And that's on the

1004
00:49:34,040 --> 00:49:36,280
Speaker 6: refining on the hub side of the project.

1005
00:49:36,520 --> 00:49:38,880
Speaker 1: We're going to keep our eyes looking ahead to what

1006
00:49:38,920 --> 00:49:42,000
Speaker 1: the market has in store from twenty twenty five and beyond.

1007
00:49:42,160 --> 00:49:44,560
Speaker 1: And Tim, thank you so much for sharing your views

1008
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:46,799
Speaker 1: today and for telling us a little bit of boit

1009
00:49:46,880 --> 00:49:48,160
Speaker 1: more about life cycle.

1010
00:49:48,360 --> 00:49:50,480
Speaker 6: Thank you, Dana, thank you, Benji, thank you for having me.

1011
00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:51,520
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.

1012
00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:02,080
Speaker 1: That we've heard from three of the winners of the

1013
00:50:02,080 --> 00:50:05,439
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three Pioneers Challenge. Let's talk about next year,

1014
00:50:05,520 --> 00:50:08,560
Speaker 1: and let's close off our show today by going through

1015
00:50:08,760 --> 00:50:12,319
Speaker 1: the different challenges for the twenty twenty four Pioneers program.

1016
00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:16,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Dane. Super excited about twenty twenty four challenges.

1017
00:50:17,280 --> 00:50:21,040
Speaker 2: The first one is relieving buttlenecks in deployment of clean power.

1018
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:25,200
Speaker 2: We then have the really big challenge around the carbonization

1019
00:50:25,280 --> 00:50:28,440
Speaker 2: of building, and the third one is around sustainable fuels.

1020
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:32,680
Speaker 2: So we le the Wiener's announced later in spring, and

1021
00:50:32,719 --> 00:50:35,839
Speaker 2: we are very excited about the application we got and

1022
00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:36,440
Speaker 2: the process.

1023
00:50:36,680 --> 00:50:38,400
Speaker 1: We'll be back here on switched on with some of

1024
00:50:38,400 --> 00:50:40,400
Speaker 1: those winners. I'm sure. Thanks for joining.

1025
00:50:40,239 --> 00:50:41,759
Speaker 2: Today, Thank you for inviting me.

1026
00:50:50,560 --> 00:50:53,600
Speaker 1: Bloomberg ne Ef is a service provided by Bloomberg Finance

1027
00:50:53,719 --> 00:50:57,160
Speaker 1: LP and its affiliates. This recording does not constitute, nor

1028
00:50:57,200 --> 00:51:01,360
Speaker 1: should it be construed, as investment advice, investment recommendations, or

1029
00:51:01,440 --> 00:51:04,960
Speaker 1: a recommendation as to an investment or other strategy. Bloomberg

1030
00:51:05,080 --> 00:51:08,359
Speaker 1: ne Ef should not be considered as information sufficient upon

1031
00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:12,000
Speaker 1: which to base an investment decision. Neither Bloomberg Finance LP

1032
00:51:12,200 --> 00:51:15,640
Speaker 1: Nor any of its affiliates makes any representation or warranty

1033
00:51:15,680 --> 00:51:18,640
Speaker 1: as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained

1034
00:51:18,640 --> 00:51:21,759
Speaker 1: in this recording, and any liability as a result of

1035
00:51:21,800 --> 00:51:23,719
Speaker 1: this recording is expressly disclaimed.