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Is there an end to what graphene can do? Golf balls go farther, concrete is stronger, clothes and batteries last longer. It is a pity that only one gram of graphene goes very far.
Versarien, one of the many graphene producers listed on the London junior market over the past six years, said that "its graphene manufacturing division has not yet generated significant revenues." Group losses before losses, such as taxes and depreciation, increased to £ 1.1 million. Despite the more mature side of Versarien, which sells hard metal coatings to the oil and gas industry. Currently, the group sells here 100 grams of graphene and a kilo to be tested by potential customers with whom it has signed many collaboration agreements.
Managing Director Neill Ricketts is confident that one day the group will reach its break-even point and hopes to increase its graphene production capacity to 30 tons per year. At the same time, he is trying to raise funds from the Beijing Graphene Institute of Technology in exchange for a 15% stake.
Graphene was discovered in 2004 by a couple of scientists from the University of Manchester. They realized that this carbon sheet of an atom of thickness was a million times thinner than a human hair and had a resistance 200 times greater than that of steel . Enthusiasts quickly began declaring that the ultra-thin, mega-flexible and superconducting material would do in Manchester what silicon did in a California valley. Graphene would revolutionize electronics, computers, energy, biotechnology and transportation, they cried.
But it takes decades for graphene to become a good commercial use. Versarien is one of the very many companies trying to figure out how to take advantage of it.
Versarian explodes or "exfoliates" pieces of graphite – a relatively common product – to turn it into graphene.
He got exorbitant prices for his product – up to £ 125,000 per kg – which suggests monetary signals to investors, estimating that 30 tons could yield billions of dollars. However, manufacturers will not replace cheaper materials because they know that graphene works at current prices. Prices must go down if we want the use and production to take off. In the current state of affairs, industry experts estimate that the global graphene market will be worth about $ 550 million by 2025.
Part of the problem is that graphene is so much higher that it does not work easily with other materials. It's "totally inert," say the scientists.
Mr. Ricketts is optimistic. New uses and technologies are meeting all the time, he says. This month alone, Paragraf, a Cambridge University-based company, has secured funding to develop its "first commercial-scale method" to provide usable graphene in sufficient quantities for use. large scale in devices such as transistors and sensors.
The change is not fast enough for the rest of Aim's graphene hopes, though.
In February, Haydale Graphene, who uses a plasma reactor to turn graphene into ink and paint, asked investors for more money to cover working capital needs, complaining that "the cycle of development "had taken longer than expected. "Large multinationals have not made progress in their projects as planned," said the Welsh company, which its rival Teeside took over in April, Applied Graphene Materials. Then this month, Haydale warned that revenues would be in the lower part of the forecast. His shares represent only a fraction of their floating purchase price five years ago.
The shares of Directa Plus, an Italian company that manufactures a graphene-based flame retardant and permeates graphene in golf balls and bicycle tires, represent half of their debut with Aim in 2016. They would probably be lower without the support of Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire in the biotechnology sector, has sometimes been called "the richest doctor in the United States".
The least said the best about Graphene Nanochem based in Malaysia. Last year, he disappeared from Aim after failing to file his accounts, announced his intention to turn into a construction company and that his appointed advisor resigned.
This is the disadvantage of supporting ideas that change paradigms. Typically, one in ten businesses succeed, while others languish or, worse, perish. Although graphene is a flame retardant and allows golf balls to go further, it does nothing to smother the pound in the pockets of investors or to prevent their wallets from going up in smoke.
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