Electronic Signature Licitness: Streamline Budget Approvals in Canada

How to eSign a document: electronic signature licitness for Operational Budget in Canada

[Music] on June 10th Canada added silicon metal to its critical minerals list and before we even talk about what that means for silicon here's what you need to know big picture why this so important the Canadian minister of Natural Resources recently said critical minerals are the building blocks for the green and digital economy there's no energy transition without critical minerals no batteries no electric cars no wind turbines and no solar panels all right so that's Big Picture This latest update to the list highlights the growing importance of silicon metal specifically silicon in modern technology so the move will offer greater certainty for Canadian Mining and Manufacturing businesses while further building out the nation's capacity to meet the growing Global demand for silicon hpq is developing with the support of two worldclass technology Partners New and proven green processes that are crucial to making critical minerals such as silicon that are needed if we're going to try and get this net zero emissions economy here to talk about that is Bernard welcome back my friend thank you George thank thank you yeah go ahead yeah you're welcome you're welcome hey by the way we should be talking today because I'm mourning Greece not being in the Euro playing a couple of hours ago they lost on penalty shots on the qualifier and this is a sad day for me but again you encroach on my private days when I should be with my family on this Z that one you can't that one you can't blame me you know I didn't pay them that much to to lose on the last one that's true I'll send you reminders from now on in my calendar when I have blocked off dates so yeah yeah but you could have blocked out that one quote quote from you this validates our strategic vision of developing the p P vac which is something we haven't talked about in a while I'm sure the shareholders love it that's why I'm going with this first developing the pure vac QR technology a new Pro proprietary process to produce in one step a zeroc carbon footprint High Purity silicon metal material so how important is this June 10th announcement from the Canadian government to what you're trying to do at the pure vet um it's massive in in a certain way I was uh we were always blocked when we went to go see the government about developing this is because we didn't fit anywhere first of all there's only one silicone metal manufacturer in Canada wow um Canada uses it the material but it's not really it's not really an IND an indigenous product that that we're doing although we have the quartz we have we have the carbon we have everything to do we have the electricity um but it it was never how can I say this it was very difficult to get the attention Okay because it didn't fit on the box often it's how you fit within the Box the government has decided where the money comes in now in the US we fit in and now there's a lot of opportunities in Europe we fit in and everything else more annoying we didn't fit in here it's like Quebec out of their logic went for the natural resource SI and they basically put silica High Purity silica and their critical mineral list so if you wanted to go and apply for um financing for silicone based siox battery material you didn't fit in that category although you know Purity silica it's really the silicone with the material so that sort of resolves a one of those situation it's going to you know multiple multiple doors and it arrives at the perfect timing for us because you know hpq been mostly focused on the FSR fume silica reactor which is advancing great which is really you there's great things in the pipeline probably wearing an even Wilder shirt then but you know great thing great things in the pipeline um and I always wanted to bring back the qrr and have an opportunity to presented for the last few few few months we've been in discussion with different group and we we finally came up with with a concept where we can do win win win with the qrr technology where we can get multiple reaction I I I I've said it at multiple time um we were going to develop the qrr once our battery side became big enough to generate demand for that material okay that we said many times well now that we've probably figured a way to use some of the unique characteristic of the qrr okay to generate at least two Revenue stream from the same process all right so we're going to be using carbon carbon once okay but we'll get two Revenue stream for that and explain to everyone one and two quickly just to catch some people up especially the new people well to to to to convert High Purity silica okay into high Purity silicone okay you you go through what's called a carbothermic process where in traditional process you need six stons of raw material to make one ton of silicone metal in our case we need because we have an enclosed reactor more efficient process we need four four and a half tons of raw material to make one ton of silicone okay the second thing is we have and it's written the Press we have an enclosed reactor but having an enclosed reactor um there is no oxidation of the of the carbon generator so it stays in a carbon gas okay now I know Carbon gas as itself is a very toxic material which makes the handling of it very difficult but we know how to handle this thing and the beauty of it is there is a technology that exists it's not it's not a new technology where you combine that carbon okay with hydrogen all right and you suddenly create an alternative synthetic fuel can be used for Aviation and other all other issues now we're thinking of how we we've been thinking you know outside of the box which what we always do at hpq is how we can use that more creatively how we can use the fact that our system is smaller scalable how we can use the fact that we generate carbon and we're now starting to see in economics where we can get two Revenue stream for making the battery grade material feed stock required for us to make the siox so uh with silicone now being a A in the critical list all right all those concept to move it forward and the beauty of it of hpq is that it's not a PowerPoint type of concept idea okay the technology to convert carbon to synthetic fuel exists it's been used since you know at least 80 to 100 years it's actually used commercially at different areas but what they do there is they literally burn carbon to mix it with hydrogen to make the synthetic fuel in our case we would be using the carbon to make silicone metal okay and then we would have that waste byproduct to make the you so we have two great Revenue schemes so I'm really happy that you know the Canadian government finally woke up you know to to what we've been doing um but the timing is perfect for us to restart to to mention that the qrr is really a unique technology that we be developing it as I said many time you know we are as as a non-revenue R&D company to work commercialization we have to manage our projects so we had decided to put a lot of emphasis in the on the fume silico reactor some other emphasis on the silicone material for Batteries but now we can see the qrr can fit into it and we can we can see doors opening up for significant uh subsidies for us to to to validate the commercial scalability of this and the beauty of it is not going to be that long for us to do because we already got the QR pilot plan so just you the Press releas I'm going to read here the QR is clear economic advantage over comp meeting uh actually sorry made mistake there further this designation will likely unlock Federal and provincial funding opportunities to bolster domestic supply chain so do you think that uh this suddenly opens up doors uh significantly like adding it to the list we already a lot of us a lot of investors you even the industry knew what you're capable of with the qrr adding silicon now to the critical min minerals list does that just cut off Supply from the likes of China and now start to drive demand towards companies like hpq Silicon that can actually uh produce hity silicon is that what it does to get you over the edge it's not going to happen instantaneously but it now mean it now means that we are doing a material okay in a funny way okay we've always check marked all the things that the government was looking but we were not on the official list and you know lot a lot of people have learn when you're dealing with governments if you're not on the list you're not on a list so it's just just the the way it works the the other Advantage is that you know we've we've really Advanced and push push this this technology we validated we can make silicone model we validated technology work um but now we have something totally new so it's it's very interesting because you keep asking me is is the phone ringing with regard to my battery results well one of the things where the phone has been really ringing in a certain way in our discussion and even from Chinese manufacturer okay it is the fact that we have a zero carbon silicone metal now our issue has always been capex versus Revenue stream you know I I had a lot of fudster making a lot of BS about you know we should be generating revenues out of our 50 ton pilot plan I don't think people have sat down and made the mat you know 50 tons multiply by 6,000 it's not it's not something to it's it's not really something big it's not really worth it um but now we can demonstrate that we can scale this up we can bring it up we can generate those issues there's another concept that we're looking at called green waste energy all right which is the concept is when you build a green grid okay by default it will generate too much energy at one point because it generates the entire issue of alternative energy or basically green energy is that it generates energy when you don't need it so at one point you have green waste energy now one of the things a lot of people want to do with green waste energy okay is do hydrogen well hydrogen then you have a massive problem how do you shift that hydrogen where you need them because often the our technology is beautiful because we can make two things with the green waste energy okay if we because of our size and our scalability if we pack oursel up with with batteries buffer okay we can generate the hydrogen on one side make the um make the silicone metal at the same time make an alternative green Fuel and a and an alternative green fuel is much easier to transport it's not a natural gas that requires uh that requires pipeline so there's now so many alternative where we could fit in with all this technology that starts with a qrr if we didn't have the qrr and it's capacity to its capability to basically do zero to to to carbon carbon credit generating Technologies it's going to start to come into play so how does this change what's next for the qrr like does this accelerate anything is there something you start doing differently as of while the announcement came out on June 10th so it's a week ago but do you start doing something differently right now and saying okay because this addition to the critical minerals list uh we're going to start going down this path first because there are a lot of things but you've already got um you've already got fume silica on your plate you've already got the Silicon anodes on your plate so if you're going to start going down the qrr route um is there something specific that changes tomorrow today uh what changes for me today is I can go back and talk about this this great technology that we have all right um I actually my my day started at 7 this morning on a conference call with some people that are really excited about our ability to make green silicone use green waste energy and then convert that into silicone silicone battery silicone engineer silicone battery materials and putting into this um so it's going to be accelerated it comes into play it's really our our really our our Ace card okay that's always been there it's never been seen as that much important now it becomes really really really important in in the situation and it's the landscape has changed changing faster than I thought you know you have even the US Department of energy willing to finance projects in Canada but we have Partnerships in the us where we could work together to establish this we have the we have the LOI with excelic the know these are all things that come into it which which actually starts with our ability to make the silicone metal so what I'm sort of saying is fume silica fume silica is great it's going to be a massive success it's on the right track for success but our silicone with are silicone for Batteries as I said are going to be bigger Market we probably won't make the Eid margin that we're doing fume silic but we'll still make some pretty darn decent margins with with all that process especially if we had the secondary revenues from our um for more carbon so yes this opens door because actually you know I had some discussion with the Quebec government and it's actually almost some somewhat stall with regard to the battery material because it wasn't yet part of it I think everybody knew it was coming but until it's out it's not out sometimes it's like that with government so then I can go back and you know ret talk to my contacts uh we will be able to fine-tune our business model business approach and our demands for for for subsidies and Grant and get things the project moving in addition to getting a lot of interest from private investors because you know we do have something unique moving forward silicon by the way remind everybody even me has silicon metal been add to the critical minerals list in the United States yes not the that's why I said as finally okay because the reality is Canada were always late to the show so Europe was first Australia was second us was third Canada was four Devil's Advocate Devil's Advocate given the fact that you're making inroads in Europe significant inroads because of conversations had in the past uh significant inroads in the United States Market does this really add and this DS Advocate does this really add on a lot of uh potential in terms of more sales in Canada because right now there's only one manufacturer so now you can be the you know the clean Green version and yes it does or is it more a case of it'll add up it'll open up financing opportunities with the Canadian government which will help you move along the process in order to be more successful in Europe and theed States the reality is that silicone materials for Batteries is going to be in high demand and there's no capacity to produce it okay there might be a producer of silicone metal but there's not a producer there's not too many people have the capacity to convert that into engineered silicone materials that known the process that have some patented ideas so this differentiates us but what it does it it opens up an envelope a budget envelope okay and sometimes if you don't have the right budget envelope and that's something I've experienced one you know even the government wants to help you but the envelope isn't exactly designed for you so it's like everybody scratched their head how are we going to you know how we going to put something round in the Square Peg now it's not it's not it's not complicated we're on the list it opens up massive amount of funds we do everything that the government's looking for fundamentally we're talking about reducing significantly the carbon footprint of silicone Metal Manufacturing I think people people forget this it's a material that everybody uses in their daily life okay and yet silicone metal like when you take your telephone okay it the chip at the bottom is made out of silicone silicone material it is the largest emitter of CO2 per tons of material produced okay it's not the largest emitor in the world because it's not it's only a 3 million Market ton but multiply 3 million ton by by five you got 15 million tons of CO2 issued a year year overy year okay with our technology we could cut down to zero of course that would assume us taking 100% of the market but this is what we're talking about so if you know it's like you have two choices you go the carbon tax route carbon tax route is great for us because we have an advantage or you basically subsidize or help technology or give tax incentive to investors that invest in those situ situation so it's and it's a technology that work we've demonstrated we can we can make 3 in si which is all what you need to be able to make the the engineered silicone material for before batteries the way for people keeping score at home another Bernie ISM there it's Square Peg and a round hole I'm not going try to attempt to say what you said but it was funny keep keep them coming um back on track when I say the phone ringing is the first phone ringing you making a call or maybe you getting a call from or to the Quebec government from or to the fed from or to the federal government to say hey we've got this it's on the critical minerals list we need your help not just in funding but you know what other ways can they support you so are those the first discussions uh that you're having as a result of this I was having those preliminary discussion before but you everybody was sort of scratching their head you know as my bism said so what I'm saying is now is everybody on the same page they didn't know where to fit you yeah well now it's going to require me to go and call and and talk to people and and you know re rediscussed that you have slowed down a bit in the process but um there's so many people I'm talking to in different areas that you know it only just takes one like in the fum silica business it only takes one so going back now even to something we talked about a few minutes ago there's one silicon producer in Canada yeah you say and you've proven by the way hq's P Val qrr represents a significant breakthrough in silicone production unlike traditional methods which require large scale facilities multi-stage energy intensive polluting processes the pure VAP small footprint scalable efficient converts Rock warts and high Purity silicone on in a single step um what does that mean for that one producer right now does this mean that you know you guys are ready to step in H I guess maybe people are thinking we're not ready to step in yet in the sense of becoming a head to going head-to-head competition with them okay that's not our business model our business model is to go after niche market that these guys cannot go after because it doesn't change their bottom line okay when you have a you know when you have a multi-billion dollar a year business and even if you can get 5,000 tons of that material at three times the price or four times or five times the price you sell your material it won't change it doesn't really move the needle on the on the I okay doesn't really move but for a company like hpq it really does and this is where the needle changes in the sense that you know we are now our ability or our thinking to be able to use the carbon that comes out and find a way to generate Revenue out of this uh then the iida completely changes you know either our green fuel energy will cost us zero to to do or near zero okay and our silicon will cost us X or we'll split the cost over all those issues and just go get go get the sales and remember we're looking at how to vertically integrate and this is something that becomes very important in the battery side because um battery manufacturers prefer to have um stable supplier of feed stock so you know it's for me one the reason why I sort of wanted really to publish this press release today was just to get people to remember hpq is much more than just a fume just a fume silic you know we are we have multiple projects that are moving forward coming along um I'll be talking more about the hydrogen just a quick news flash to people I I do read okay the the reason why we gave up of the Nano reactors is I'll give a second because what people don't realize is nano powders okay are highly explosive and dangerous material flamable explosive material okay we're developing in the hydrogen field a solution that is basically safe to transport nanop particles are not safe to transport so it wasn't a case of you couldn't do it no matter what we couldn't we couldn't do it when we're doing it a Nano reactor but we ended up realizing that the Nano a nanomaterial is also a very dangerous material so right now in the battery space okay it's sort of like weird there's a salain gas that you another explosive material or there's an there's a there's an attempt to use nanop particle silicone which is not really working because it's very difficult to do but then if you have Nano particles you have a material that becomes very uh very dangerous in in to deal with so you know if we don't need to complicate our life we won't makes sense because you got other you're not a onetick pony so you got other things other things to rely on so the pure VAP has two opportunities it allows you to vertically integrate for your own purposes and will allow you to also create product straight up for for other for other uh buyers correct y the internal vertical is the one that's going to be the highest priority shortterm I'm presuming uh I think well well if you take a look developing the battery material we we'll continue to work on this and continue to improve the material and continue to get that moving because that's the one that seems to be getting more and more traction um you know there's more and more interest there's going to be more and more demand and there's going to and there is no supplier what we're doing in North America um and depending who happens to win the election it might change one of them might reduce the um the uh the subsidy but will make even more ter barriers to to the product so there will be an even more imminent need for a local supplier of the material so you know whatever happens we are incredibly well positioned in the silicone space you know it's the the point I really wanted to to to make with all this is that hey guys we still have the qrr and the QR is still a great technology it's not because I've been low-key about not talking about it that I don't think um day and night how we can you know get that to the next level which is figuring out way to go commercial but I in in my yeah go ahead and the Catalyst well it's sort of it the Catalyst has been discussion I've been having with with with people okay that would like the qrr to work and then when I present the qrr concept combined with that you know light pole goes in there and says okay do us quickly a two-page executive summary of what this would represent how this works out so we're we're not working on the numbers now my next number is trying to figure out what will be the right size um right size system so we can use uh so we can maximize our use of what we call green waste energy in the process it sounds like it's pretty clear to me that there's some Advanced discussions going on already I mean you're having them this morning it sounds like you're really planning things out this isn't just kick the tires right and we we've moved we've moved past kick kick the tires okay actually it started to gel more uh firmly and I think one of the reason is that we feel so confident that fume silica is going to be one of those check mark success demonstration that we've taken a project from um from Lab scale to commercial scale that then this will create additional credibility to hpq and its team and its Partners to been able to go and take a project from Lab scale to to bring it up to commercial scale right my man that's all the questions I've got for you that's a pretty good summary of what's I mean we kind of jumped around there a little bit but I think the best came out at the end that you're in advanced stage discussions or I maybe I shouldn't say Advanced that's my adjective but uh it sounds like you're in meaningful uh stage discussion by the way I'm going to just Pro around because people home probably asking George asking more is that domestic is that American is that overseas somewhere um and maybe if you can if you can talk about that what kind of application are you are you guys talking about right now um right now it's mostly North American European not really Canadian right now um and it's mostly for for for silicone material for batteries um and that's really where it is look if we're talking about the silicone silicone metal yes that that's where it is um that that is where the situation is but it it might it might play into um a lot of people figuring ways to to to you have you know basically to to generate a lot of green energy and then figuring a way you got to figure a way to convert that green energy into something that's sellable because often where you end up installing your green your green energy is far away from where you needed the material or you need the energy so you have to figure way to transport it and what's better than transporting it through making battery material for that are needed for EVS when you're having these discussions are you getting a sense of um hpq is just better than most if not all the Alternatives out there for the party you're talking to or is it a situation where they're talking to you they're talking to georgec silicon and it's still not you know it's it's still not a clear advantage of hbqs it is a clear advantage to HBQ because we're the only one having a solution okay and having a proposal that is centered around uh basically zero carbon silicone metal remember Europe is it's following tariff is on on basically the carbon footprint of your material so the carbon footprint of making I was even listening to to to somebody this morning on Bloomberg about this the carbon footprint of making silicone metal is becoming a big headache so you know for us to being able to to to bring it down to almost zero uh it's phenomenal anybody coming close uh how many other guys are you know would you consider and there can't be one person that controls a market so you know is this rarified air where it's hpq and maybe a couple of other companies coming up the ranks or are you really sitting that pretty because that's one thing a lot of us don't know is where do you sit relative to the rest of the world the rest of the market well I'll I'll bring you an example that I've used many time in the fume silic business it's sort of oligopoly controlled by a series of big pharmaceutical not pharmaceutical chemical companies in the silicone metal it is large player because of the capex required behind building it and the massive Opex operation remember if you need six tons of raw material to make one ton of product and your minimum size is 50,000 ton per years to be economical you're talking about needing 300,000 tons of feed stock every year move to that plant doing those issues okay so these are not something where so the barriers to entries are multi-level barriers to entry in our case we have a process that is I would dare say more human siiz and we're talking 2,000 2,500 ton we need four you're talking 10,000 ton per year of RW speed stock new plus or minus something um so that completely changes the dynamic of all those issues put together uh I think I discussed this once with you I said is this are are are supercomputers used to take up rooms and then we went to uh you know smaller comp you know Cay supercomputers then went to desktops and any I'm not sure if I got that all right but you understand what I'm trying to get out here is that what you're offering Bernard is that what really is in addition to the low carbon the zero carbon or near zero carbon is it also the fact that it's almost modular Ander mod we offer a modular decentralized ability to produce silicone so we can either choose to have it close if there access to electricity close to the source of the quartz or close to the source of the carbon or close to the source of the energy so that that's really that's really where we have an incredible Advantage is our scalability and our ability to to rightsize ourself in the process I think that's something that's something that's sort of been Lost in Translation because um because the FSR just sort of came in and and QR the QR needed need you know I needed a bit of this time to figure out what's the best way for me to Market it I knew that you know the patent for the low carbon would be great and but originally our idea was to convert that carbon back into a solid carbon for to put into it but you know after discussion looking at the numbers and economics going for the hydrogen for the synthetic fuel is much better well it seems like the Canadian government came on at the right time June 10th they gave that Catalyst uh great overview on that here and I think a lot of us are going to be really looking forward to whatever conversation is you're having involving the QR right now but in the meantime thanks my friend as always uh great shirt I'm sure we're gonna have a lot of comments about that another great shirt and can't wait to have you on next time cheers everybody cheers hey small cap fam I hope you love this interview because more than a dozen people were involved in its production for the sole purpose of making you happy if so can you take a moment to support both our awesome guest company and Agora Comm your engagement means the world to us first if you enjoyed this video give us a thumbs up by tapping that like button it's a small gesture that helps this interview reach even more potential investors to discover today's guest second we would love to hear your feedback on this interview so please leave a comment below be sure to keep it clean but feel free to poke fun at George if you loved what you heard on today video and want to dig into our 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