Hazer Group Limited

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining Hazel Group's Q1 FY25 shareholder update webinar. Presenting on the call today, we have CEO and MD Glen Corey and CTO Tim Forbes, who will run through the highlights of the most recent quarter. Following the short presentation, there will be time for a Q&A, which we will begin with the questions that we've received in advance. We do expect there to be quite a high number of questions today, so some may be consolidated just to avoid repetition. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, you're most welcome to do so, and please use the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen, and we will endeavor to answer as many as we possibly can. So with that, I'll hand over to Glenn to kick off.

Thanks, Hannah. Good morning, everyone. Great to be here. I'm Glenn, the CEO of Hazer. I'm joined on the call by Tim our Chief Technology Officer. Together, we're going to present some of the highlights from our investor webinar from our results, which were released to the ASX on Monday. In terms of our agenda, we'll hit the headlines up front. Tim will provide an update on our commercial demonstration plant. I'll circle back and then talk about our commercial partnerships, our competitive positioning, and then I'll give a brief update corporately before we open the lines for Q&A. I'll jump straight in in terms of our headlines. We've had really strong CDP performance. We're delivering on our operational milestones. We're driving towards tech readiness towards the end of this year. Tim will talk to that very shortly. Very pleased to now be reporting that we're receiving payments under our engineering service agreement with FortisBC for our project in Canada. This is a model for the future and a really important milestone for our business. Thirdly, we've hit some key milestones on intellectual property. I want to talk to that very shortly. We're strengthening our IP, our protection, our depth, our coverage globally. And that's a really important place for us to be as we move into commercialization. And then finally, I've spent a little bit of time globally with investors, energy groups, and at some conferences, and it's becoming really apparent that we have got a very unique technology. It's got a very strong competitive advantage, and we are a real viable alternative to green hydrogen. So a really important place for us to be as a business. In summary, a very strong quarter, and we're building the foundations for our commercialization. So Tim, maybe that's a good place to hand over to you for an update on our CDP.

Yeah, thanks very much, Glenn. And if you can jump to the next slide, that'd be great. So great to be here, everyone, and provide an update. Thought I'd just start with a bit of a reminder about what the CDP is about. So a demonstration plant down at the Watercourt, south of Perth, 100 tonne per annum hydrogen nameplate capacity. We achieved first hydrogen and graphite in the beginning of the year. And then since then, we've been progressing well through our structured So we have a series of specific tests with specific objectives to enable learning about the technology and help demonstrate that we're ready for commercial deployment. That test campaign is progressing well and indeed nearing completion. And I just want to highlight that a couple of aspects of this demonstration plant that are really pretty important. One, the continuous operation. So it really is a different thing to operate a plant. continuously end-to-end technology. That's what you need to do to commercialize the technology. That's very different to running things in a lab scale. So continuous operation. And then add a scale that's large enough that de-risks the large-scale commercial performance predictions. So when you're running a pilot scale, there are... scale up, scale down factors that result in optimistic predictions or can do. And so operating at this scale is a substantial de-risking factor before we progress on to the large commercial scale testing. And just lastly on the CDP, so for a reminder, this is processing biogas. So this is a fully renewable feedstock and hence well supported by ARENA with the funding there. If we go to the next slide, please, Glenn. So in terms of a couple of the key highlights this quarter on the operational performance, more than 360 hours, continuous operations, stable production is a really big milestone for us, demonstrating that we're in control of the process and the technology and giving us insights into what ongoing commercial performance we can expect. So during these 360 hours, we had a very high uptime, and indeed the downtime was related largely due to external factors and non-core technology issues. So we had a series of minor blips, whether they were power supply interruptions, feed supply interruptions, regular commissioning issues, and we're very pleased to report that we're able to restart the technology quickly. So sometimes back online within five or 10 minutes and producing hydrogen and graphite, as well as the process being resilient to those trips. So that's a really positive outcome from this year. Also on the operations front, we've undergone our first planned inspection campaign from a materials integrity perspective. The process that we're running is in a challenging environment. High pressure, high temperature and hydrogen is challenging. We're pleased to report that there's no adverse results or findings in our first inspection campaign. So very pleased with those strong results there. On the technology front, I'll talk a little bit more on the next slide, but just want to remind people that fluid bed technology is not new. it's reliable, resilient, and scalable. So we're deploying a known quantity there. And with the chemistry that is new, we're achieving conversion in line with expectation and supporting our large commercial scale design basis. So again, on the tech, things are looking very good. And then lastly, on the graphite, We've already produced substantial quantities of graphite. We are in the process of optimizing the quality to ensure that when we move into our product development and qualification, that we've got the right properties there and we can really extract the maximum value from our graphite co-product. So in summary, a lot of progress and big highlights this year. strong results and we're feeling confident and nearing the completion of our test campaign. Next slide, please, Glenn. So in terms of what is the test program achieving, we see three key areas where we need to deliver results on in order to be ready for commercial deployment and drive our commercial projects to the next phase. One, we need sufficient continuous operation to demonstrate that we're in control of the process and that we're going to get reliable and predictable results in the largest scale units. We've already achieved our results there with the 360 plus hours. The other aspect of this one is also solids handling equipment. So our graphite product properties are a little different. And so it is the first time where Tim Jones- Moving the graphite around the plant with with conventional technology screw feeders and and. Tim Jones- cyclones filtration systems, etc, so we're pleased to report as well that we don't have any concerns on those and they're working as expected on the continuous operation front, where we are complete with our initial phase test Program. Gareth J. On the scale up validation we're nearing completion here. Gareth J. The conversion results and hydrogen production results we've achieved are in line with our large commercial scale design basis, as is our catalyst consumption. The one that we're still in the process of demonstrating is our graphite purity, and then putting a bow around all the analysis that can substantiate this. But we're getting very close to claiming success on the scale up validation here. Then on the hydrogen graphite production, Again, we've achieved adequate hydrogen production and graphite production rates to be confident that we have completed the test program. Where we're still working on is getting the high volumes of graphite at the high purity to move our product qualification work into the next phase. But at this point, strong results, very happy with the efforts of the team to deliver these this year. and on track for completion of the test program by the end of the year to take our commercial projects to the next phase. Thanks, Glenn.