Good morning, and welcome to Bergen Carbon Solutions Q4 presentation and the company update. I'm Odd Strømsnes, and I'm the CEO of the company. In addition to the general BCS update, we have in today's agenda chosen to deep dive into the growing carbon nanotube market, what we call CNTs. Q4 was very much a continuation of Q3, both in terms of product enhancement and cost reductions. The exit speed of 2023 equals to the speed and the modus operandi for entering 2024. Q4 was very much a reflection of the progress we announced in Q3, continuing the technical qualification of the nanocarbon, enhancing the battery's functional quality, make the battery charge faster, replace scarce material, make it cheaper, and extend the duration and overall battery lifetime. We continue to make good progress with no red flags to report, closing in towards the specified requirements.
Solidly, we confirmed earlier this year by the extension of the Huchems agreement. It could be said, however, that the speed of the quality improvement was slower in Q4 than in Q3, as the last mile is sometimes the hardest one. An increased number of other interesting client discussions have been taking place, both in Europe as well as in Asia. In order to speed up the verification process, a decision of investment into a battery lab was taken, where ordering of long-lead items have been done. An improved sustainable battery production program is high on the global electrification agenda, and as such, new battery regulations are being established by the EU, defining the environmental footprint. Among other, aiming for local sourcing of sustainable carbon for the battery industry, and all this is spot on for us.
And finally, with the financial burn rate on budget, we have all in all delivered a quarter in line with expectations. And our financial numbers confirms this, that we are continuing to have the finances to execute on our strategic plan. We have a solid cash balance with a cash burn of NOK 6 million in Q4. That includes interest income of NOK 10 million. We have an adjusted net loss of NOK 5.6 million in this fourth quarter and a full-year cash burn of NOK 60 million as per budget. We are now at the stage where we have a solid cash position of NOK 230 million, still zero debts and an equity position still above 90%.
We will, however, have further investments into 2024, following our strategy to invest in the battery lab and other equipment needed to accelerate our product qualification and process optimization program. 2023 was the first full year following our strategy shift, communicated at the end of 2022, where we proved that the concept of producing advanced green carbon, like CNT, which the world's electrification transformation is solely dependent on from the greenhouse gas itself, is a second-to-none equity story. 2023 was indeed a year for consolidation, which I said before. It was a year for product quality improvement. We spent time on process optimization, cost reduction, and not last, organizational development. We spent all our efforts on our core business technology, meaning improved performance from the electrolysis activities, and this was also reflected in our organizational development and our recruitment initiatives.
The CNT market is very much about complying with technical specifications, and we really did significant improvements in terms of particle size and morphology, which is so important in order to enhance the battery performance in a sustainable way. We have, as such, tried to show different function of our CNT in different battery applications during our previous quarterly updates. We did see an increased attention during the year to our product and our CCU capabilities from large international industrial players. With several of these companies, we are now in a product qualification process. They test our CNT in their different battery applications, and we are expecting results of these tests in the coming months. Our investment into battery material, testing, and verification equipment will accelerate the speed of this process.
Finally, EU's critical raw material policy, with strong emphasis on local production of sustainable battery components, are growing on the international agenda and with the battery fabricators, which obviously is good for us. BCS in brief. It is important to reiterate the message that Bergen Carbon Solutions is a high-end technology material company. We are one of the very few CCU developers, in which the CCU concept do see an increased focus from, among others, EU and large industrial CCUS developers. Our business is driven by the value of what we produce, combined with how we produce it, which from the CO₂-consuming nature, is in line with current EU regulations and policy developments.
This illustration you have seen before, but it's good, and it illustrates the overall in the full carbon-based value chain, where BCS can play a critical role, both upstreams, in terms of carbon capture close to large CO₂ emitters, and downstreams, in terms of carbon utilization, close to the carbon end user, like a battery fabricator. The higher CO₂ concentration in the flue gases, the more effective is our electrolysis-based capture process. Today, many of the planned battery factory startups are being based on imported anode graphite from Asia, produced from petroleum, coal, or mining. When we know that one third of a battery CO₂ emission comes from the anode material itself, it is paramount to seek local solutions in order to drive also the battery component emissions down. I believe the lack of sourcing of sustainable battery components has not yet gained enough focus from the battery producers.
Many companies are interested to talk to us merely as a capture company, as they have a lot of CO₂ to get rid of. So it is important to emphasize that our business case, again, is absolutely dependent of the utilization element, by the fact that we need a commercially viable agreement of our product offtake. We are independent of geographic location, as long as we have CO₂ and electricity. Based on clean hydropower, this production is a net true CO₂-consuming exercise. As many of you know, we documented this by a successful proof of concept last year, together with a large waste incineration plant here in Bergen. We are currently focusing our efforts on the CNT market. Why is that? Here, we have made most progress in our client discussions. We know exactly what the market wants in terms of product qualifications.
We think also that this is commercially the most interesting carbon product, and last but not least, the significant growth potential in the CNT market overall. We know that 70% of today's battery contains carbon nanotubes, and this percentage is expected to grow with future battery chemistries, as the criticality and the importance of the nano carbon in these new battery chemistry will increase. This is why we are applying and participating in several industry-based development project for new and more sustainable battery chemistries. Most of our product qualification work during last year, we concentrated around multi-wall carbon nanotubes, or the CNTs, where we have a good understanding of the market and the required product specifications.
We have a number of times pointed out that BCS do have a key role for supplying this noble, clean carbon material, and it's important to stress again, it's both for the anode and for the cathode side of the battery. CNT will, as an example, for silicon-based battery chemistry, act as a reinforcement agent on the anode side. The cathode is a lithium metal oxide component, releasing lithium ions and electrons during charging and accepts them during discharge. The nanotubes acts as a conductive agent and increases the conductivity between the particles. That means adding nanotubes to the cathodic material will therefore increase the energy, density, and enhance the conductivity, which basically means three things: it's increasing the charging time of the battery, it faster charge the battery, it increases the durability between each cycling, and a longer battery lifespan.
The CNT market is expected to grow significantly over the next 10 years, driven mostly by the increase in electrification of transport. The electrical vehicle market drives the global increase in battery supply itself, but also an increase of the CNT utilization in each battery is important. The global CNT market was, in 2021, $3.3 billion, and with the predicted 15% annual growth, gives a $5 billion market in 2024, and more than $11 billion CNT market in 2030. As you can see from this slide, the CNT production today is very Asian-centric, with obviously China as the largest and dominant player. However, Europe is expected to increase the market share going forward.
As you can see from this slide, the 10 largest battery cell producers today is covering more than 90% of the market, and they are all located in China, with in Asia, with China as the single largest producer. This is obviously the main driver for China's ambition to totally control the access to critical raw material, which is needed for this industry. As the Asian market is more mature with respect to CNTs, we, as in Bergen Carbon Solutions, generally attracts a higher attention in the marketplace than we do here in Europe, and that's an interesting point. However, we know that there are 40-50 battery factories currently being planned in Europe, so the European market share is expected to increase to around 25% in 2030.
That's why the new EU regulations now defines a set of critical raw materials for Europe to be more self-sufficient, with more local production, and synthetic graphite is one of these materials. Traditional fossil-based production of CNT is today performed through a CVD process, chemical vapor deposition. This is a well-proven and operational mature process, but it's very energy intensive and with significant greenhouse gas emissions. We have identified, through scientific papers, CO2 emissions from this CVD method above 400 kilos of CO2 per produced kilo of CNT. In comparison with our methodology, where we are consuming around 2 kilos of CO2 per produced kilo of CNT. And there's also a substantial delta in the energy consumption, where we are able to push down towards 20 kWh per kilo of produced carbon, which is less than 10% of the energy consumption from the CVD process.
These comparisons are interesting, and they are obviously extremely important for our value proposition, and obviously, needless to say, it attracts a lot of attention in the market. The global produced volumes of CNT is relatively small, even based on a significant growth to around 70,000 tons in 2030. But as I said, they come with massive greenhouse gas emissions, and that is why it's so important for us to focus on the environmental impacts of the battery components, and should, as such, be high on the ESG agenda for the European and the Norwegian battery suppliers. Just by blending in a small amount of our product into the mix, will contribute with large CO2 savings. We need to focus on cost and quality, and then you can argue the rest will go by itself.
Our carbon clients are very technically competent and cost-focused, and we do need to ensure we are meeting the requirements on these fields. But we also acknowledge, however, the importance for us now to secure additional client commitments going forward. The following actions are what we will do in order to meet that. We will continue to focus on process improvements. It is worth, though, to repeat the fact that we do make a tailor-made product. We're not making bulk material, which fits all. Each customer has its own recipe for their confidential battery chemistry, and this has indeed a strong bearing towards the specification of our deliveries, as the characteristics of both the nanocarbon and the graphite plays a key role for the battery performance.
New and smaller equipment is now being implemented in our process to speed up the testing and the verification timeline, to reduce the turnaround times from carbon characterization and the subsequent operational adjustments we then have to do. All in all, this will reduce the time for the CNT qualification process. And cost. We need to produce a material of industry grade for battery production at a competitive price. So, as I said before, we announced a pretty aggressive cost reduction program last year, and we are repeating the message that we are delivering on it. Our new CO2 separation and filtration methodology is now commissioned and in full operation. It will reduce our electrolyte consumption by more than 90%, and we are now basically able to recycle our electrolyte with our CO2-based technology.
and almost eliminate the use of the previous methodology based on acid, and this is a win-win situation. This is a very important milestone for us, as the cost of the electrolyte is a substantial part of our total cost picture. Our target of bringing the cost down towards the fossil market alternative within this year remains fixed. Client validation. We continue to have talks with many different potential customers all over the world, confirming the different specification levels, mostly for CNTs. More specifically, we are in concrete validation and qualification processes. Currently, we with several of these, but it takes time, and the speed of the process is not always something we have control over. We are dependent of the internal testing speeds in many of these houses.
To accelerate the validation process, we have decided to invest in more equipment and in our own battery lab, in particular, where we can test our carbon material in real-life battery applications. The process with TKG Huchems in this respect is progressing, but unfortunately, somewhat delayed. We expect results from them later this month. All in all, this is very good news, as we are going in the right direction, and we have absolutely faith that we will succeed and have the right approach and strategy. The entry barrier is high, but so is the reward for improved battery functionality for the end user. That's important to note, and that's why we see a market with high willingness to pay for the right product quality. A long-term offtake contract for higher volume is what we anticipate. The new battery lab I mentioned, here is a slide on it.
To speed up the validation process, we have decided to invest broader in our own testing equipment, including a battery lab where we can test our CNT in real-life battery applications in-house. That means we'll be able to accelerate our initial screening of the product, and that's important, and form an independent opinion about our product in the different battery applications. In addition, we are teaming up with dedicated test houses for certain post-electrolyzer tasks. And just for clarity, the battery lab is only meant for us to accelerate our internal material characterization process. So to conclude my presentation regarding operational priorities going forward, we are continuing to be fully funded to deliver on the following key priorities: We maintain our cost reduction initiatives and promising technical qualification progress. They are significant and paramount for our success. Systemized process optimization and continuous improvement, meeting technical specifications.
Our post-electrolyzer equipment, including a battery lab, to speed up our qualification process. An exceptional market increase for battery production, also with European focus, in a market with total Chinese dominance. Secure and develop contracts and partnerships, recently confirmed with Huchems and other. And we do see, and I will repeat that, an increase in the global client interest for Bergen Carbon Solutions and our product. And finally, we have the capital discipline to support the ongoing activities until we are ready to take the next step. That concludes my presentation and brings us into a Q&A session, and thanks for the attention.
Okay, I think we're ready for Q&A. My name is Fredrik Øksnes. I'm the CCO in Bergen Carbon Solutions. Today we have a lot of questions regards to specifications of the product. We also have multiple questions regards to timeline and customer commitments. So the first question, I guess, will be: are you still confident that BCS, during Q2, will get some kind of customer commitment?
Okay, first of all, thanks for the interest to Bergen Carbon Solutions and the questions. I think I tried to answer that in the presentation. I mean, we are building a new industry. We are developing new technology. That requires sometimes a certain challenge to predict the correct timing. We have a big we have a large dynamics towards different clients. We're testing our material towards the different specification and that is in good progress. As I said in the presentation, we are seeing that some of these processes takes more time. That's why we are investing in in-house equipment. We are continuing this work, and as I said, then, during the next months, we will get feedback from a variety of different clients using our CNT in different products, both in Europe and also in Asia.
That sends us to the next question. What about? It's a huge focus on Huchems. What about other customers? Can you say anything about that?
One of the reflections I've seen among the question is that there are quite a limited amount of information coming out from us, and why is that? That's because we are developing a product, we are optimizing the process, and we're talking to a number of different clients. But there are clients we cannot really go officially out with, and they have also a specification to work on. So I would say that we are currently spending all our time in the dynamic lifespan between different clients and developing our product accordingly. At the same time, as we're accelerating our capabilities of testing this equipment towards these clients.
Mm.
But I can say that they are very interesting potential client. They are big industrial companies, and they are in many different spaces of the supply chain. And that is, I would say, the most promising piece of news, I would say, during Q4.
Mm. Would you say that the whole market for the CNTs are tailor-made products, or have you identified, like, a standard product?
As I said here, we are not making bulk material. There are differences in the specifications of what the client wants, as it has different purposes in the battery. So today we are working in different routes of what we're trying to achieve.
Yeah, and then we have one question here regards to our previous Tokyo trip to Japan last week. We have one of the question asking if you can give us any news regards to that?
Yeah. You know, even though the world is difficult, it's not more complex than sometimes face-to-face meeting brings a lot of value. As I said, we get a lot of attention in Asia. We need to meet our clients physically.
Mm.
So this was a great opportunity. It was, a big nanotech conference in Japan. We sent, some of our guys over. We had several very good meetings with clients, potential clients, which we are currently working with and qualification with. So, I mean, this is business as usual, and, if I should say one thing, we will probably do more of these type of, activities.
Mm. Another one from the live session here-
The Huchems' agreement was basically a result of my meetings in Seoul, in South Korea.
Thank you. Will the battery lab increase the costs in Q1 and further on during 2024?
Yeah, there will come further investments into 2024 for this equipment, but that will not alter the forecasted cash burn for this year.
Okay. I think that concludes it. Thank you.
Thank you.