Okay, I think it's time to kick it off. A warm welcome to everyone, and welcome to this third quarter report with M Vest Water. The company is represented today by the CEO, Stein Giljarhus, and the CFO, Morten Hilton Thomassen. My name is Andreas Strand. I represent Fearnley Securities, and I will be hosting this quarterly report seminar. If you have any questions, please submit them through the Q&A function in Zoom, and we will try to cover as many as possible following Stein and Morten's updates. With that, I leave the word to Stein and Morten.
Yes. Good day, everybody. We will allow another 30 seconds for everyone to log on and then start the presentation. Hello, and good day again, everybody. Thank you for showing up. We will hold the Q3 webcast now and give you the last updates throughout this quarter and also some forward information and activities that we plan for into the end of this year and early next year. The agenda looks like this, and I'm gonna repeat some of the in brief information that most of you, I believe, will know some of. There are also new people out there interested in us, and I will share some of this also with you.
We were established back in 2017, and we have offices and facilities in Bergen, and now also established in Germany. We provide green and environmentally friendly products with the brands NORWAFLOC and NORWAPOL. We are today 13 employees, and we are listed on the Euronext Growth in May last year. Our products are NORWAFLOC, which is one of them. It's shown on the right side of this slide. It is a natural and biodegradable polymer and raw material often used in food processing. It is classified according to norms and also regulations in Europe as a green environmentally friendly flocculant. We are now using this in several industries where wastewater and sludge occur as a by-product to be further treated.
The competition are mostly using synthetic based polymer, like polyacrylamide, which accumulate into larger particles and become defined as microplastics. They are classified red and yellow in the same control system used also in the oil and gas industry and also in the REACH system, which is used in Europe. On the left side here now, you see that we dose in the NORWAFLOC product, and it separates immediately the particles from the water phase. It collects particles and glue them together into small flocs, which we call them. In some of the processes, we also use a second technology, a filtration reactor, which is called NORWAPOL. Down on the right, you see that that is our second product. It is a polisher step in the process and separates even more the polluted water.
NORWAPOL consists of a system with special treated filter mass from crushed glass and has filtration performance double as good and traditional sand filters and also walnut shell filters. Additionally, and also separates out the smallest micropollutants in nano sizes. This cannot be done, as we know, with other competing filters. It has also series of advantages affecting positively the OpEx, which is precious in oil and gas industry. You see here on the video the flocs, and these are then put through as a final step in the water treatment and sludge treatment process, and it can easily be separated fast. By that, we also are able to bring out, as I mentioned, the nano-sized micropollutants, which is very important in many industries today, especially in the oil and gas. They are searching for possibilities to do this, but it's hard to find.
We have shown this as evidence and proof at an oil terminal in Norway where this is possible to do, and we come down to very close to zero discharge. Also remember that one of the main reason for us for narrowing this gap to zero discharge, something that others don't achieve today with their old technology, they are using the old technology. Sand filters was first introduced back in 1804. Yes, you're right, 1804. It's more than 220 years ago, and they're still using it. They have not renewed anything. Walnut shell filters were introduced into the oil and gas business in the U.S. in the early 1970s, about 50 years ago, and they are still using it, and they believe this is the solution.
We have now shown them our solution, the NORWAPOL in combination with NORWAFLOC, and we have succeeded in that as well. I come back to that a little bit later. What are the highlights for the last June? We have performed several qualification activities in the oil and gas segment on produced water. We have proven the unique NORWAFLOC to be better performing technology than existing products and methods in the market. This has been made in three areas. It was in oily waters in Norway, the first, resulting in sales to client, both in slop water and also in produced water. Based upon knowledge and success, it has also been rolled out to other large markets. The largest oil-producing market in the world, which is the U.S. onshore oil production.
Yes, you're right, they passed both Saudi Arabia and also, Russia the last years. Technical qualification was also made on salmon slaughterhouse with successful result. Next step is a full-scale treatment of blood water and sludge at the same plant. Now, what is going on forward? You see on the right hand of this slide, a full-scale qualification in the largest river dredging activity in Germany. Very successful, and then the next important qualification step is a verification on winter operation and frozen weather. This will commence in January coming. We are planning and preparing well for that now. Additionally to above, we prepare to do three different full-scale qualification tests described here. Municipal sewage water and sludge in Norway, one of the biggest in the west part of Norway.
Similar projects in Germany, and third, a recirculating aquaculture system in conditioning water in a fish farm in Norway. Morten, I leave the word for you.
Yes, let me go through the financials. First of all, for those of you who had read the newspaper this morning, Finansavisen, they have announced that M Vest Water has a profit of NOK 7.6 million for third quarter. I need to confirm that that is not correct. Unfortunately, the result is EUR -7.6 million , sorry, NOK -7.6 million , as you can see from this presentation. We have revenues from two projects within oil and gas in Norway. These projects has a potential of increasing revenues, and we now have projects running to utilize these opportunities. The OpEx has been stable through the whole year, NOK 8 million for the third quarter and NOK 22 million year -to -date.
We have in third quarter made investments in storage facilities and also production line in total NOK 3 million and a total CapEx of NOK 7 million year -to -date. The cash burn has been NOK 10 million in third quarter, and as you can see this is stable between NOK 10 million and NOK 12 million in the three quarters this year, and this is according to our plans. This gives us a cash balance of NOK 44 million and an equity of NOK 69 million at the end of third quarter. As Stein mentioned, we have some positive developments, achievements, and technological advancements, and we now see a change. We receive increasing number of inquiries involving paid projects and paid test programs and tendering requests from larger corporation, and then especially within aquaculture and municipal wastewater.
Looking at our project portfolio, assessing the business potential and the scalability. We now state that we maintain our expectation to be cash positive by end of next year. I give the word back to you, Stein.
Now some business updates. Expansion in Europe has been in our plans since last year, as you recall. We sourced experienced people, built the organization, and now also adding an experienced director of operations in addition to the sales, commercial, and technical resources already there. We identified some solid partners on quality production of our products, and some efficient logistics companies and widespread distribution and fulfilling the value chain in our expansion into this large market with multiple industries. As we know, Germany is the largest industrial country in Europe, with just above 80 million citizens and highly modernized society and good business environment. Today, we focus on three, excuse me, four large markets where we also had our breakthrough earlier. I give you an update here on the oil and gas.
We have continued our supplies in 2022 on two oil and gas wastewater treatment plants with NORWAFLOC treatment of highly oil-contaminated water related to oil production in North Sea. The two segments are, produced water, which comes up from the wells, and slop water, which is basically the drainage water and sludge and, waste that is being collected, out on the rigs in the drain systems there. This concludes that M Vest Water, NORWAPOL and NORWAFLOC product and technology are field proven and accepted to the oil and gas industry in Norway.
As a result of our breakthrough in Norway, we decided to participate in a qualification program for treatment of produced water onshore in the U.S., which is, by the way, the largest oil-producing market in the world, I mentioned that earlier, and made a breakthrough in this first step of qualification with one of the major oil companies in the world. Both our technologies, the NORWAPOL and the NORWAFLOC, entered the qualification as a best performer and attracting the interest from both the operating company there with worldwide spread to its activities, but also from other players in the oil and gas industry watching this from the sideline. We may say that the conservatism is a hard thing to leave. We experience that with, you have been in the oil and gas business, you know that.
We think that 50-year-old technology or walnut shell filters has seen its better days and should need to be replaced with more efficient new technology like the NORWAPOL, for example, giving the clients far better end results and value for money in their investments. To the aquaculture update. As we know, fish farming industry is large in Norway. That's well known all around the world and growing in other regions in countries around North Atlantic, North America and Chile. The industry faces new environmental regulation on discharge to the sea in effect from this December 2022 coming soon. They come to us and they seek solutions to the regulatory requirements, quite often now. On the photos you can see the different, separation and contaminated water and sludge to a better separation.
You see the blood water up on the upper photo there, and you see when we dose our NORWAFLOC, what it becomes, we separate out clean water and we separate also the sludge down to the left photo there, and then putting it into some process. We even make it drier and we make it more separable and then they can discharge the water to the sea with no problem and within the new regulations. The water up to the left is what they leave in the sea and in the nature until this regulation comes. We understand that it has a very strong effect on our environment.
There are up to four different water streams needed to be treated, and we are presently now also performing a full-scale recirculating aquaculture system technical qualification to one of the largest player within the industry. We cooperate with a major player in ballast water treatment, Downstream Marine, who has provided treatment plants to 70% of the industry in Norway. We now add our new technology and improve a far better end result in cleaner separation and wastewater to the sea. Our position is strong together with Downstream Marine, a company that has service agreement with most big clients and gain on adding our unique product to the portfolio. Also an update here on the municipal wastewater. It is by far the largest sludge dewatering market and accounts for about 60% of the total flocculant and coagulant consumption market in the world.
We are involved in municipal wastewater projects in both Norway and Germany. We are qualified for a full-scale verification program at a large water treatment plant for municipal sewage starting end of this month. A test program is in parallel being prepared for a municipal sewage treatment plant in Germany end of this year and into the first months of 2023. On the photos to the right, we see a good separation on the sewage raw water. Adding NORWAFLOC to it, and you see a good separation. Like you saw on the first movie demonstrating the effect of NORWAFLOC added to the water stream. A separation into clear water and a sludge that can be further dewatered and put into fertilizer processes as a valuable by-product.
Note that regulation being imposed says that this by-product fertilizer is prohibited anytime soon using the synthetic polymers in the flocculants presently being widely used by our competitors. Today, they are unwanted by the users, and most will avoid them in search for something better. An update on the dredging. This is not a very well-known activity here in Norway, but it is a very large industry in Europe and in particular in Germany as the largest industrialized country in Europe. Dredging the sea and river floors are made by transporting sludge and mud from the seaways, from harbor fronts, from rivers, from lakes in Germany. It was reported a volume of 46 million cubic meters of sludge brought in for treatment and deposit in 2020. It is a lot, we think.
Compared to something we may imagine clearer, it will fill up approximately 93,000 standard size swimming pools of the size of 25 m by 12.5m. That's quite a number every year. M Vest Water's establishment in Germany is strategically necessary, both in terms of access to the market and access to resources such as expertise and technological solutions for water treatment and sludge dewatering. We entered a dredging qualification program outside Hamburg and had our breakthrough technologically at one of the largest European dredging sludge dewatering sites in the full scale qualification test, where we successfully treated a flow of 2,000 cubic meters per hour dredging sludge for dewatering.
The two glasses on the slide shows a clear measurement on how much more we are able to separate water from the sludge by adding our NORWAFLOC in a settlement tank, making it drier and useful for environmentally friendly biomass to nature. The glass to the left is the benchmark, the same treatment and result with their incumbent flocculant. You see here that there are more water phase and drier sludge at the bottom of it. I will show you soon a video that shows how this sludge looks like, and it's going to be further treated. This shows that the performance is by far better than other widely used flocculants. It also means that the cost for this process is less, and there is a good value in the by-products that is being put out as biomasses around.
The qualification test verified cost saving potential and environmental gain for the clients and the industry in general by obtaining large reduction in use of unwanted synthetic chemicals, cleaner water discharge, and substantially more dry sludge for transport to landfills with a 25% less synthetic flocculant polymer in this sludge. Next step is a full scale verification now in coming January. That's the next step we need to go through on this program. Reason for that is cold weather and it's obviously going to be tested there as we do river water. Successful testing will bring M Vest Water into dredging market in Germany in 2023. So far, this looks very promising for us. I show you now on this video the sludge coming out of that big pipeline over there, and you see the consistency of it.
It's being transported then over screens, and it's going to be pressed later on with more NORWAFLOC to it to make a separation even better and to make the end product, the dry material, the dry sediments, and also take out more water from the sludge. This, of course, saves the operator a lot on logistics and storage and other associated activities to this process. I leave you with this video. Stop there, in fact, and we will thank you for your attention, and we will open up for Q&As. If you have anything that you are wondering about or want to know about, you are welcome to share that with us. Thank you.
Yes. Thank you very much, Stein and Morten. We have one question. To the audience, if you have any questions, please submit them through the Q&A chat function, and I will try to cover as many as possible. Let's take the one we have. It says, "Any update on the ECHA regulation on microplastics?
Oh, the only thing that we briefly receive from both players and from regulatory bodies, obviously in the same region is that they're working hard to impose it. It is, of course, politically a strong resistance. In some part there are concern, of course, among the big players. I think it's normal thing that we also see back home here when something comes to oil business or fish industry recently experienced. It takes some time before everything is in place. They announced earlier it should be in early 2023, late 2022, early 2023. You also have to manage some, how many is it? 27 members also in this big game.
I think we have to be honest and say that we will probably wait a little bit more. What is positive, though, is that all the players we meet on the client side and also on the service side, they are very clear that they want to have something environmentally friendly because they know it's coming, and they need to prepare for it.
Very good. Next question. Once again, if you have questions, please submit them through the chat function, Q&A. Next question is, what revenues can we expect from paid projects in first half of 2023?
I can answer that. Paid project amounts to everything from NOK 100,000 to NOK 500,000 . This is sort of the scope. This is projects that's typically goes on everything from two days , three days until three weeks or four weeks. It varies. To predict how many of these projects and revenues coming in into the first half of next year is difficult, but I would say that we would have one or two maybe monthly with these projects.
Okay. Very good. I think that was the last question. Thanks a lot for tuning in, and I'll leave it to Morten and Stein to come with any concluding remarks.
Yes. Thank you again for showing up and showing your interest. We are coming there, as you can see, and we believe it will be very good when we show the breakthrough on the other industries as well. We have documented that on some of the industries that we focus strongly on, and we managed to come out as the best technological solution for many. Now it is the challenge to go out there and do this also in full scale. We did a lot of full scale. We did field tests full scale, and we are continuing doing the same thing as we have said and the same thing as we believe strongly.
Just follow us, and thank you very much for your attention today.