Mark Duff: The way they’re working things in Germany, Ross, and thanks for the kind words. But the way it works in Germany is one central organization is managing the waste that’s generated from the decommissioning process. And that’s who we’re working — one of the entities we’re working with over there is to provide the treatment technologies we have here in the US to reduce the volumes of waste they generate by a significant amount, 75% to 90% and put them in a position where they can be stored in the new Germany or German storage facility called the Konrad facility. And the Konrad facility is going to provide radioactive waste storage for the whole country. It’s going to be very large. And what they’re basically doing is defining the waste acceptance criteria or the criteria to store there now and everybody who would plan to ship to them has to meet that criteria now.
We’ve already been through this process with a larger client in Europe — in Germany, which requires a review of the — by the German regulators of our facilities and the way we treat waste and they do walk-downs. There’s all kinds of paperwork and permits and plans. It’s all been approved. We’re applying for the same things for these — for the decommissioning program as well. So that’s where we are in the process. So to answer your question, I think it will start off slow. Everyone’s moving very slowly over there as we’re getting through this permitting process and everything goes along with that and the agreements we have to get in place. So we anticipate starting to see a reasonable increase in German waste to the tune of about $5 million or $6 million a year in the late ’24 time frame.
And once we get the plant that we’re proposing in the UK up and running, we see that number at least doubling and because it’s so much more efficient and economical with the plant over there. So it’s really difficult to define since we don’t have hard and fast contracts in our hands at this point, but we know the ways they’ve got. We know the volumes they have. They’re very, very large volumes. They have very fast or accelerated timelines. They have to implement to remove their waste from storage, put it in stable forms and then get it in the Konrad facility when it’s up and running, which I think is ’28 or ’29 time frame. And there’s a real sense of urgency for that. So we see that really increasing in Q4 and through ’25.
Operator: Your next question is coming from Aaron Warwick with Breakout Investors.
Aaron Warwick: I wanted to ask a little bit more about this PFAS opportunity. I wanted to begin just by — I mean, I’ve been seeing a lot about it lately in the news. Some other companies have been talking about it as well. Just wanted to get a sense of — and obviously, you mentioned enormous TAM. What is the competition out there for you guys in that market?
Mark Duff: Right now, there are competitors out there. We’ve seen press releases from some of the big firms that are going to do incineration which does not necessarily destroy everything and is not preferable for a lot of organizations, particularly the DOE and DOD, which have said they are not allowed to or prohibit consideration as a treatment method. And there’s deep well injection, which is largely Texas, which are deep or injecting very, very large quantities, millions of gallons a year into 4,000, 5,000 feet into the ground, into the bedrock. Those are both in play. And our options now. There’s also filtration, which does not apply to a lot of different waste streams because your filters get gummed up too fast. But those are the kind of the existing technologies now that are in place.
The ones that are coming up that are total destruction technologies, we’ve been — been able to identify about a half dozen that are coming up that you can see on the Internet plus other colleagues we know. They all have very innovative approaches. We have not seen anything that has our discriminators, which are specifically lower temperature processing with lower pressures. Also with the speed, we can do that. But most importantly, the simplicity of our unit. Our unit is so simple that relies on chemistry and some engineering in the process, but is an inexpensive unit. Once we get this thing fine-tuned, we can have it mobilized and to be operated at much higher levels than we’re starting with. And also, as I said before earlier, will translate to soil.
So as far as the competition goes, there are several start-ups that you can read about out there, but each one describes their technology has something that we don’t have in regards to economic and simplification of process. Louis, do you have anything you want to add to that?
Louis Centofanti: Yes, we haven’t seen anything that economically, one, that has really destroys the PFAS, just doesn’t separate it and does it in such a simple system that we have. So we’re very optimistic of where we can go with this process in terms of competition.
Mark Duff: As I mentioned, Aaron, the real — our competitors — and we’ve talked to most of them or a lot of them. The significance of the EPA press release we had yesterday and the EPA announcements from last week are really significant in that it sets the foundation for the market and the timing of the market, not just that everyone’s got PFAS knows what’s going on or at least has a sense. But now with — it’s on the doorstep of being promulgated into regulation that will include time-critical requirements as well as acceptance by EPA and more importantly than anything else enforcement. And once that starts, then the fire will be lit under everyone to get moving. And we see the market really taken off and it’s going to be critical for us to have our systems deployed so we can start handling the volumes that come out from that.
Aaron Warwick: What sort of independent entities, if any, have verified that your process works besides just what you’ve mentioned on the call yourself?
Louis Centofanti: Well, we’ve used two universities for testing and a variety of private companies. Now again, because of the proprietary nature of the technology being so unique, we haven’t had white papers done on how it works and what’s going on here. So we have filed a variety of patents and we’ll be filing a lot more because the further we go with this technology, we see a variety of markets where it could be of value.
Aaron Warwick: So what is the expected timeline on when those would be granted those patents before you start trading in September, October time frame?
Louis Centofanti: Well, no. We filed the patents. Patents are pending. At this point, patent review, especially on this — these are very fundamental chemistry patents and they will take some time. Our experience with patents or we could see a year or 2 of review on these patents, especially because of their significance.
