First Graphene signs an MoU with a US$10bn company

Warwick Grigor commentary from his newsletter

During the week First Graphene made its most commercially significant release ever, in my opinion. After six months of negotiations it announced the signing of an MoU with Gerdau S.A. that promises to open up the American markets to PureGRAPH® products. The final joint venture agreement will take a little longer to sort out the details, but that is for the lawyers to fine tune. Not many people in Australia know of Gerdau, but it is a serious company with a market capitalisation of around US$10bn, listed on the New York, Sao Paulo and Madrid stock exchanges. It specialises in the production of steel using electric arc furnaces i.e. from scrap steel. The introduction came through the Graphene Engineering and Innovation Centre (GEIC) in Manchester, UK, of which FGR is a Tier 1 member. Gerdau was initially established by a German industrialist in the mid 1800s. Basically, First Graphene and Gerdau will jointly work together to market PureGRAPH® products in the first instance, develop new applications and build a distribution network in the Americas. Joint production facilities are on the agenda. Gerdau has a vision of graphene being a major profit centre as a diversification beyond its steel business, with a view to being a leading player in this exciting and disruptive sector. Having the endorsement of First Graphene by a company as powerful as Gerdau is very significant. It is a major step forward in taking the graphene sector from being an innovative curiosity to a commercial reality with a growth curve that will be very impressive over the next 20 years, and beyond. This is a major inflection point for FGR.