Member Article

Redcar-based Applied Graphene Materials prioritising customer operations for growth

Redcar-based Applied Graphene Materials, the producer of specialty graphene materials, have reported a satisfactory overall trading performance in light of interim results for the period ended 31 January 2015.

Results are expected to be announced on Wednesday 25 March 2015 with the company reportedly pleased with the progress achieved in these areas and in particular the pace of progress since the announcement of the full year results.

The overall trading performance of the Group for the period has been in line with the Directors’ expectations with net cash of approximately £6.6 million at the period end.

Operational priorities have been customer sampling, developing customer relationships, performance data generation and ongoing enhancements to the manufacturing and dispersion processes.

As previously reported, November 2014 was a record month for Applied Graphene Materials for the number of samples provided to customers.

The Group recently announced two new senior management appointments, being Nigel Blatherwick as Commercial Director and Dr Adrian Potts as Vice President Business Development for North America.

During the period, the Group commenced preliminary work on the front end engineering design of a larger scale mk4 production asset and this design work will continue in the second half of the financial year.

This investment is in addition to that already made in the Group’s in-house engineering expertise which to date has been focused on developing our existing proprietary production equipment.

During the period, the Group has gradually increased the run rates of its production assets as part of plans to evidence the consistency and quality of production at higher volumes.

This activity will also continue in the second half of the financial year as ongoing enhancements continue to be made to the Group’s manufacturing and dispersion processes.

The effects of these investments in customer relationships and front end engineering design work is that some costs will be brought forwards into the second half of the current financial year and into 2016 in order to support the long term growth of the Group.

The Board remains confident that Applied Graphene Materials is well placed to play a leading role in meeting the growing global appetite for graphene.