I fully concur with this list and would like to add our friends...

I fully concur with this list and would like to add our friends in Japan to the prospective customer list.

Talga’s Director of Battery Technologies, Dr Claudio Capiglia still resides in Osaka, Japan and was previously a Senior Scientist at Toyota, specifically in solid state batteries (SSB). The Japanese auto OEMs have been tinkering with SS tech for a lot longer than their European counterparts and it was very interesting to hear Mark Thompson reference their ‘practical’ SSB (Talnode E) during the recent Paydirt presentation. With Dr Capiglia’s knowledge in this sector and connections with Mitsui/Toyota etc., you could imagine that Taldone E would likely be in early stage qualification with Japanese OEMs.

Mark has also stated that there is no shortage of EU Green ESG funds they can tap into to help fund the project and the delta between this and cost of their JV funding partners would be factoring this in. It would be very tempting for Talga Management just to utilise the EU Green funds given the size and scale of the opportunity in Europe alone is enormous. To warrant the extra time and complexity of entering a JV with a Japanese conglomerate there must be a sizeable and attractive market opportunity to supply Japanese OEMs via Mitsui’s extensive network.

The other strong linkage with Japan we recently saw in the DFS was Talga stating that some of the extra capex was associated with the company sourcing the best equipment from German & Japanese manufactures to meet Tier 1 auto OEM requirements. Furthermore, if Mark didn’t see a significant market opportunity in Japan, he wouldn’t have his head of Battery tech headquartered there instead of Rudolstadt Germany or Cambridge in the UK.

Looking forward to Mark’s presentation tonight at the Rhomotion conference & then hopefully VW can elaborate on its raw materials strategy during its 2030 Strategy event this evening as well!