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clock Created with Sketch. 10/03/16
11:14
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Originally posted by Jukes
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Speculating on outcomes after connecting a few dots can be great fun. Sometimes with a few points scattered widely on a piece of graph paper, attempting to draw a straight line graph through them can be disasterous. Better to use longer term information for purposes of extrapolation and prediction. MO moved to UK because it was at a strategic time to do so. Europe is the region on the planet where early adoption of wave power will occur. He doesn’t have to be where the waves are largest but he does have to fan the waves in those political and financial circles where present key debate is occurring. Some politicians will be pointing at ‘all the failed marine energy companies’ and he has to be there to say with authority, “But we are here and have had success”. CWE now has a sufficiently diverse complement of expertise (45 staff total) in Fremantle to handle the ongoing design and construction contracts. This frees up MO for glad handing and meetings of strategy. He was in Australia for “a couple of board meetings and some other activities and thought, why don’t I have some shareholder information meetings as well while I am here”. MO stressed the point that the UK provides FiTs and plug-in sites while the EU provides capital. “Capital brings capital” and CWE presently has access to $60M in cash, grants and loans and is therefore in a very comfortable position. The article by Giles Parkinson on the UK project was a key segment MO made at the Sydney meeting. Didn’t see him there (I was sitting up front) but it is an accurate account. So indeed, it is an interesting question as to what the discussions in Canberra were about. If Turnbull genuinely wants to make innovation support part of his election policy then CWE would be a star example. He could have wanted to pull some general advice ideas from MO. On the other hand, if a major Defence Policy package is being assembled energy security for Naval and communications facilities could also be included and that would directly benefit CWE. After an election Turnbull would no longer feel bound to Abbott policies. Juke
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Turnbull has a long history with CWE, at least since 2007, at the time of macfarlane's "holy grail" comments. He was supportive then and I've got no doubt time has given him peace of mind regarding the company, its professionalism and potential (with some reassuring realism thrown in as well).
