Good morning, and Welcome to Betolar's Business Review. My name is Melina Pinomaa, and heading our company's communications. Today, we have our CFO, Riikka Ylikoski. Unfortunately, our Matti Löppönen, CEO, cannot join due to COVID. About our agenda, we're gonna go through some key results regarding Q1, look into the progress of piloting and commercialization, and look into our business development. Riikka, please go ahead.
Thank you, Melina. According to the recent studies of Credit Suisse, almost 68% of the CO2 emissions in the building industry is coming from the cement production. We are making a transition with our customers in this area by offering our unique material technology with our Geoprime solution. We are acting according to our values. We are innovative, we are courageous, and we are really committed to the responsibility. We work together with our employees, with all the functions, and with our customers and our partners globally. During Q1, we managed to go forward with all our targets. We started really the commercialization phase with our Geoprime concept. We made new pilots with new customers in Europe and in Asia, and also completed the first commercial contracts.
We are heading to the production ramp-up with our customers during this year. We have also focused on our R&D activities and invested in the Geoprime Academy work. We have also managed to enhance our team and there are new competencies and new key positions filled constantly. Our operating environment hasn't changed. Actually, the materials needed in the clean revolution and in the construction industry is increasing all the time. We have learned from our pilot projects, and the market demand is increasing. It's driven by the construction industry, the real estate investors and developers, but also the financing market and the whole society.
The global rise on energy prices and logistics costs are, of course, bringing increased pressures or pressure to the traditional cement prices. This has also raised interest towards our Geoprime concept. The war in Ukraine is a horrible tragedy. This crisis does not have direct impact to Betolar's business. We don't have operations in Ukraine or in Russia, and our main markets are in Asia, and this crisis doesn't have impact so far in that area. Of course, it has impact to the European infrastructure building and inflation, and those will have, of course, indirect impacts to Betolar's activities as well. We have started piloting with five new customers in the beginning of the year. Three of these customers are in Europe and two in Asia.
In Asia, which is our biggest market, we started also the piloting during last year, and this has been continuation with new customers. The customers have indicated that we will end up into commercial agreements during this year and also to production ramp-ups. We are learning all the time from pilots, and we have managed to decrease the piloting time with the customers. Of course, the customers are giving us very good feedback. The first contracts that we have received, we are able to turn into production during the first half of the year. We have received four contracts during the beginning of the year. They came from Finland, from JA-KO Betoni, Denmark, IBF, Belgium, Tubobel, and Germany, FC Nüdling.
With JA-KO Betoni and IBF, we will be able to start the production during this first half of the year. Actually, with IBF, we will have the first ramp-up activities next week in Denmark. With Tubobel and FC Nüdling, we will start on the second half of the year. Of course, we are working with our customers all the time to get new contracts, the ramp-ups will be then starting on the second half of the year. On these business reviews, we present as financial key figures our net sales, EBITDA, and cash and cash equivalents. Operational key figures are personnel and new pilot customers. We managed to get some net sales during the first quarter, and this is coming from the Geoprime concept licensing fees.
EBITDA presents the current stage of the business. Our costs are increasing due to the fact that we are really investing in the R&D and our AI platform. Actually, we need to, due to the heavy growth, currently use quite much external consultants and service companies. Our cash position is strong. We withdrew the loan from Finnish Climate Fund during the first quarter. That was EUR 2 million. The whole loan is EUR 7 million, and we will draw the second two batches of the loan during next year and 2024. We have continued our R&D activities according to the plan.
We have been refining the digital strategy and our architecture. We have concentrated on the material technology, especially to the recipes utilizing slag-based industrial by-products. We have also concentrated on the data collection and artificial intelligence platform and developed the Geoprime Academy. This brings value to our customers because our customers are on the green transition, and they need training and how to kind of like optimize the production. This is also benefiting our internal personnel as we need to onboard people quite rapidly as we are growing. We are also exploring new vanadium purified slag. The possibilities are great to our customers, and we are talking about massive amounts of materials.
The indication is from 200,000 tons- 500,000 tons, and this can be used as a cement replacing cement in the Finnish markets. We have signed the letter of intent, and we will continue the research of this material in the usage of the Geoprime concept. In the data and analytics platform, we have been concentrating on the kind of like refining the strategy and also getting in the new competencies in this area. When thinking of the kind of like the data collection, we have been investing in the data acquisition and the interface technologies focused on our connected lab solution.
It allows the networked measurement and production devices to connect directly to our data platform. These measurement and production devices are in our own laboratory, can be from the external laboratory or from our customers' production. This is, of course, significantly enhancing the data collection and our data quality. This data will be then used to build or to expand the AI platform. We are developing digital marketplace, which will connect our customers or concrete producers to by-product providers. This will be then included in the whole circular economy ecosystem. We have managed to fill some key positions during the first quarter.
We have been really putting pressure on the new hires on the digital and technical area, but also in the sales and logistics side. We are growing fast, so the recruitment plan is extensive for this year and includes basically all the functions in the company. We also our management team has grown in the beginning of the year. In January, our new HR officer Antti Uski started. He has been very busy now during the first quarter, and that won't change when we go to the latter part of the year. Ilkka Iittiläinen just started in our management team. He is responsible of the operations, so sourcing, procurement, logistics, and helping our customers in their value chain.
The annual general meeting elected the board and also nominated new member Ilkka Salonen. Ilkka brings massive knowledge of the construction business to our team. Welcome, gentlemen, to Betolar. We have managed to proceed well and according to our plans in our short-term activities. We continue strongly the piloting with new customers. We have managed to get the new commercial or the first commercial contracts. That lifts us to the whole different ballgame in our business and in our journey. We have managed to increase the or go forward with the R&D activities, with the AI data platform development, and getting in more competencies. We start to create the value in customers' process. This all leads to our medium-term targets, which hasn't changed.
We are actually now when we have the first contracts and the lead times, or sorry, the contract times are quite long until year 2032. That actually brings us to our long-term targets which has remained the same. The growth strategy is progressing as planned. The market seems to be ready. There is more demand. The financing sector is creating that. The construction sector is creating that. We are providing the solution. The activities with what we have done takes us forward or takes us towards our targets. One big step is that we are opening the markets in Asia, where the biggest growth potential is. We are doing this together with our scientific, technological, and commercial expertise.
Thank you for your interest.