There has been very positive chatter on this forum about the Coldry and Matmor technologies even though they have only been developed to pilot scale in the case of Coldry and lab scale in the case of Matmor.
I invested in ECT based on the hope that these technologies would be commercialised and ECT could have a role in making the world a better place, with a cleaner coal technology and a cheap steel production technology. Recently, I have developed some reservations about these technologies.
Whilst Coldry technology has potential to deliver a cheaper, lower CO2 emission thermal coal, the thermal coal market has a very limited future outside of particular markets like India and some other parts of Asia. I remain of the view that, even in India, thermal coal will not be in use as the mainstream electricity generation fuel after the next 20 years, or so. In my opinion, ECT would do well to develop markets for Coldry as a feedstock for high value chemicals and fuels (including hydrogen) rather than focusing on thermal coal.
In regard to Matmor; I have other reservations which relate to the ability to attract investment in crude steel production from the global steelmaking industry. The global steel industry has invested several thousand billion dollars (yes trillions) in blast furnace equipped steelmaking plants around the world and these are producing about 1.5 billion tonnes of steel annually. Currently, there is around 200 million tonnes per annum of excess steel production capacity, globally. Whilst I am positive towards Matmor as a potentially cost effective crude steel production technology, utilising cheap brown coal and a lower grade/lower cost iron source, I am concerned that there is so much invested in conventional blast furnace technology, it will be very difficult for steelmakers to invest in new Matmor plants while they have idled blast furnaces which remain on their balance sheets. I really hope that Matmor will have its day but, in my view, it is still a long way off. Matmor is reminiscent of Ralph Sarich’s orbital engine technology. Most of the global car makers bought the rights to use the technology but had no intention of using it because of their vast investment in conventional reciprocating engine technology. They did not want to be different to their competitors (and that is why most modern cars look much the same, thanks to the wind tunnel) and take the risk on an innovative technology, but left the way open to use it in the event one of their competitors adopted it.
This causes me to conclude that, given the state of development and commercialisation of these technologies, we should be relatively happy with a market cap of $40m.
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