Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) has announced that the it has taken a Final Investment Decision ("FID") on Phase 1 of its graphene manufacturing expansion project. The expansion project includes an executed 5 year lease to expand total office and warehouse space to 3,500 square meters, the next generation of the Company's proprietary graphene production technology with enhanced automation, a micro-grid with energy storage component to improve commercial and environmental electricity supply for the production process, and an infrastructure corridor to allow rapid scaling of further graphene manufacturing capacity during future phases of the graphene manufacturing expansion project.
The project will be managed and executed by the Company's engineers along with Wood engineering (the Company's graphene manufacturing scaling engineering service supplier).
GMG reported that it believes enhanced and expanded production facilities are appropriate, following "positive potential customer feedback from G+AI battery coin cell prototype testing, and ongoing enhancements to the Company's unique graphene production process".
The lease commitment of the additional new office and warehouse space of 1,500 square meters, which is adjacent to the existing Company leased 2,000 square meter office and warehouse, is intended to accommodate new staff and expand graphene manufacturing capacity.
The Phase 1 expansion project is expected to provide graphene supply for the production of the Company's graphene aluminium-ion battery ("G+AI Battery") coin cells, as well as the Company's energy saving liquid graphene products. The total investment of approximately AU$1.5 million (around USD$1,030,000) is expected to be fully commissioned by first half of 2023. This project was envisaged in the September 2021 market raise but now also includes costs to relocate all of GMG's existing graphene manufacturing capacity adjacent to its new headquarters and Battery Development Centre ("BDC") in Brisbane, Australia.
GMG's Managing Director and CEO, Craig Nicol, commented: "Taking FID on this project is not only a reflection on the level of confidence we have in manufacturing high quality graphene for our applications at scale, it's also a reflection of our confidence to commercialize energy savings and energy storage applications in the near term. It is very pleasing to see that we are now scaling up our graphene manufacturing capacity using the propriety process that we developed ourselves since 2017."
A potential subsequent FID for further expanded graphene production which is expected to be located in the new warehouse space, will be considered upon the maturing of targeted commercialization opportunities for either the Company's G+AI Battery and energy saving liquid graphene products. The newly leased site is expected to have enough space to enable multiple such increases of production.