Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and I warmly welcome you to today's virtual roundtable of the Pyrum Innovations AG. With me today is CEO Pascal Klein and CFO Kai Winkelmann. So the gentlemen will give us an overview of the half-year development and figures in a moment. So kindly note that every participant is in a listen-only mode, and you have the opportunity to ask your questions after their presentation via chat. So having said this, Pascal, I hand over to you, so the stage is yours.
Thank you very much. So good morning, everybody. Thank you all for being here today. As I have just been informed, there are plenty of people in the roundtable, much more than in May, so I'm happy about that. Just for a small information, if I have to stop speaking in between my speech due to some coughing, I had been sick, but I'm well again, but the coughing is something that remains a little bit harder than the rest. So welcome for the first half year report 2024 of Pyrum. First slide is a disclaimer that has always to be in the presentation as it will be published. So market data. First of all, I want to tell you that this presentation is a bit different than the other presentations we have done in the last, quarterly or half-year reports. Why?
Because we think that everybody in this call should be aware of what Pyrum is doing, and our business model, and what has been happened in the past. So we skip all that history of Pyrum, business model of Pyrum, to have a bit more time to speak about what happened in 2024. There will be some flashbacks to the past, but, as said, we will try to keep that presentation more to update the topics and not about what Pyrum is. I think you all know that. So, about market situation, there are some changes between what we thought it will be at the beginning of the year and what it is now. So, in 2024, we see already that the burning of tires is decreasing.
There are, of course, no official numbers, but there are, like always in every market, there are rumors in the market, and the rumors say that the burning of tires, and we feel it ourselves, that the burning of tires is not at 50% of the market anymore, but it's already going down. That's what we also expect in the presentations from the past, that the burning of tires is something that will die out in the past completely. You see burning maybe 2%, granulates maybe 10%, export maybe 2% in 2030. But as said, these are all estimations for the future. No one of us can see the future.
But, compared to last year, the burning of tires goes extremely down, and what is bad to see here is that the export in the Third World is increasing, and that is something that you can see the downside, increased tire export in 2024. The tires go mainly to Turkey and India, which is illegal. There are some loopholes in the legal system that makes it possible, and I can tell you that most tire recyclers, the tire industry, and we are working on the EU level to close these legal loopholes so that the export of waste to the Third World finally stops, because I don't need to tell you what happens in India. In India, you can buy tires on the market to burn them to heat your houses.
That is really not circular at all, and that is the thing that is mostly polluting our world. That is one thing that changed on the market, and now there are more and more official remarks about tire manufacturers like Continental, who officially posted in their press release with our RCB offtake agreement, that they want to be 100% circular until 2050, and more and more tire manufacturers and OEMs are following that. Yeah, burning tires, shredding them to other rubber granulate, that is with that, you don't make 100% pure circular tires in the future.
What is now in place is also the decision that the rubber granulate used on playground, soccer fields, and all that stuff is, will be reduced in the next eight years due to microplastics that are freed in the air. Anyway, between us all, you can cut down tires to make a soccer field or children playground that will hold ten years, and in ten years it'll still be burnt. That's what we are also working on at Pyrum, is to recycle the children playgrounds and soccer fields in the future, which we have already soccer fields, we have already tested it, in our lab scale, and it's not so much different than a tire. There's just some glue in between the granulates. Everybody knows our graph here about what is Pyrum doing.
What goes in, what comes out. There is something new about that. Still we are getting tires from Schwalbe, Michelin, Conti, Remondis, et cetera. One line is still doing one ton of tires that gives 15%-25% of steel and 0%-10% of textile, which is sold. And the euro signs, there's something new on that graph here. The euro signs show a little bit the importance of the turnover. You see a small euro sign means not very important, and three euro signs mean that that is an important part of the turnover of the whole business. We have about 700 kilograms of rubber that enters the reactor, and you get the oil and the carbon out, milled, pelletized, and the carbon, the recovered carbon black, goes today to Continental and Schwalbe.
The oil still goes to BASF, and more and more companies are joining the chemical recycling system, and hopefully soon we can publish more important names also from the automotive industry, but that's too early to publish that. But what is new, we have announced it already several times, but now it is developed and finished. In the past, our gas went through a gas filter and then to combined heat and power plant, which is nothing else than a power generator. So an engine, like the ones you have in your car, just a bit bigger. And that was the way doing it in the past, and it will remain one of the ways we will do it in the future.
But we have developed, in the last three years, an alternative energy, power, and heat system that is an alternative to what we had, which is with microturbines. So in fact, you here you have the alternative way to six or seven or even eight microturbines. It really depends on the size and the number of Pyrum reactors you have. You will have about two to three microturbines needed per reactor. And the first change you see here already, there is no filter before the turbines, which is an advantage of the turbines. The gas does not need to be cleaned before the turbines. It can directly go into the turbines, and no filters required before, which is reducing the costs.
Then, after the filters, there's a gas washer, which is also in the combined heat and power plant in the engines, but it is a catalyst, and it's more like in the car. Here, it is a gas washer, where with water and acids, the sulfur that remains in the exhaust gases is washed, and at the end, you have more or less just vaporized water that comes out of the chimney. That's why when you drive next to the Pyrum site and you see white smoke coming up, that is vaporized water from the gas washer from the turbines. So that is new, and that did cost us a lot of manpower, energy, and money in the last three years.
That's why we wanted to show that, and it was now, in the first half of 2024 , that we could prove that that system works. So that's why on the next slide, I give you somewhat details about these developments. So in fact, the old line, so TAD 1 , so reactor one in Dillingen, has a generator. So on the left side, on the left box, you see the power generators. You see also the pictures at the bottom. So you see it's a container. It's more or less a 40-foot shipping container with two engines inside, the gas buffering tank and the filters and the gas flame on top of the container, the gas tank and the filters here on the top, and the cooler. So it fits more or less in a container.
And here, just next to it, you see two big bags. It's not to show you disorder. Especially, we're looking for pictures where something next to the generator to show you the size. So here you see the size of the power generator with two big bags beside. And on the right side, you see the microturbine system, and you also see three little big bags here. They are not little. They have the same size than the big bag next to the old system. So you see that it has a much bigger footprint, so the turbine solution is in fact much bigger, but that's one of the disadvantages.
Advantages of the engine system is it is in operation since 2015, and test case, and since 2020 24/7 operation, so we have quite a lot experience with that. There's good maintenance structure, and you get spare parts quite easily all around Europe at least, and you get more electric power. A power generator and engine is more energy efficient than turbines. You get here more than 30%-35% of electricity out, but much less heat and less heat at smaller temperatures. Disadvantage OpEx costs, so the filters before the engines and after the engines cost a lot of money. There are many maintenance stops, and there's one refit need per engine every year, which costs EUR 50,000 per engine every year.
Huge engine oil consumption, and as of today, we didn't find any engine supplier that is giving us a long-term guarantee for the engines because our gas is no standard gas. So if we buy those engines and the engine breaks completely after one or two years, it's our fault. There's no possibility to attack the supplier of the engine because they give no guarantee on that. And the little heat that we produce is not enough for the RCB pelletizing, what you have seen on the slide before. We use the heat from the power generation to dry the pellets of the RCB. In the old system with the generators, that heat is not enough. It is helping the drying, but it's not completely drying the pellets. The power plant with microturbines has the advantage that the maintenance is almost none.
The turbines are not even in contact with our gas. They are only in contact with hot air after the combustion chamber, so they will last much longer with almost no maintenance. The combustion temperature is very high, with over 900 degrees, so there are lower emissions. No pre-treatment required, so less filters to buy and less costs for filters. Much higher heat, so that heat coming from the power from the turbines is more than enough for the pelletizing and the drying of the pellets. And we get guarantees for that. That is also an important point. The turbine suppliers give guarantees, even with our gas, and with the high temperatures, they are guaranteed no dioxins and furans that could come out of the system, which is, in some areas, an issue and a discussion with authorities.
In some authorities and some countries, we will have to use turbines, but it has disadvantage, bigger footprint on the building site, so it requires a bigger building site for a plant. We have less electric energy. It is just enough to power the Pyrum reactors. There's not much energy left to power annex units of Pyrum , like shredder or mill or something like that. It is quite a new technology, so it is running now since March, April, and we don't have long-term experience with our gas. But as it looks for now, it doesn't seem to cause big problems, and it seems to work quite well.
Important here is to know that the development of that gas turbine system has caused an extra cost of about EUR 2.5 million in the last years, and approximately six months of delay on TAD 2 and 3. Because it was just complex to develop, and we had some setbacks. But it is now a huge competitive advantage having both systems up and running on industrial scale. One system will not replace the other one, they are complementary. It's important to know that we will not give up the engines, but we will develop both systems, and there will be Pyrum plants with power generators, with engines, and there will be plants with turbine.
From a USP perspective, unique sales point, we are now the only Pyrum supplier on Earth, having developed two, both systems to industrial scale, and we are the only one operating both systems, which is really a giant competitive advantage, and I can tell you that our competitors are really trying to get infos about that, because it was not easy to develop. Now, as the question will come, I try to be quite open now with all of you, what happened in TAD 2 and 3, and even a comparison with TAD 1. What is happening with the two new lines in Dillingen, and where are they standing? First ramp up of TAD 2 was in January, and it went very smooth. We were already at 80% daily capacity in only six days.
And the ramp up of TAD 3 started in June, and it was even smoother because of the experience of ramping up of TAD 2, so we were already at 80% daily capacity in two days. But the war in Ukraine has caused many quality issues, even with premium suppliers. We have premium suppliers that are worldwide known. I don't want to give you their names, because I don't want to hurt their image, because I can understand also their situation. They had problems with suppliers, so they had to find new companies delivering them stainless steel tubes. Those who don't know that, the biggest stainless steel tube manufacturer in Europe was Ukraine, was almost 60%-70% making market share. A lot of stainless steel came from Ukraine, so they had to find new suppliers.
As it is, when you have new suppliers, often they don't deliver the quality that you expect. We had some quality issues, and we had some claims against our suppliers that had to be solved. That are the wet boxes on the right side, but I will tell you more about that in a minute. We had process issues. Of course, when you ramp up for a first time, a plant of that size, which is much, much bigger than line number one, and you are ramping up two of them that are producing much more in an hour. New problems came up with it we did not have in line number one, like foam in oil tanks.
Of course, line number one is also producing oil, and it's also creating some foam in the oil tanks, but it is a huge difference if you create 100 liter per hour or 1,000 liter per hour. So the flow of oil into the oil tanks is much quicker, and that is like when you take a beer, it's really comparable to beer. It's not a joke. If you fill your glass with beer too quickly, the foam goes up too quickly. So, and that's what happens also with the oil. If you fill the tanks too quickly, because too much oil is created, then you create more foam, and that foam can then go up and enter into tubes where the foam should not go. So these were some process details that we had to solve, but it was easy to solve.
We had quick ideas. It was very quick to change that. We had crystals in the gas tubes. We also had that in the past, but in smaller quantities, and it could be done in the regular maintenance stop. Now, the crystals became already a problem in the regular operation, so we had to find something to push the problem to the regular maintenance or to solve it during the operation. So that were all things that are shown in orange, on the right side of the slide, where we had stops to solve this problem. And we had, of course, and that everybody knows that is not only a German problem, but a European problem, a lack of qualified staff. That was a real issue.
At the end now, we were able to establish a full team to operate 24/7 on TAD 2 and 3. But when we were starting line two, and when we were starting line three, we needed a lot of staff, and sure, and qualified, and stable to start this unit. So we had to take staff from line number one in order to make the ramp up of two and three possible. The issue there is not that you cannot find staff, the problem is to find qualified staff you can trust. It is like in a hospital. In a hospital, there needs to be a doctor 24/7 , and in the Pyrum plant, there needs to be somebody who understands the technology and who can act 24/7 . If nobody's showing up, you have to shut down the plant, and that is not an option.
It's better to take people from line number one to ensure that. What I'm very proud about, that is a quite recent development, from calendar week 38, so last week. We have a process stability factor called CPK of 3.6. That is something that we need to prove, for example, to Continental for the audits. We have to prove them that the process is now so stable that we can be audited and can start constant deliveries, and that CPK level must be over 1.66, and we have reached 3.6, so far over the number that we need to reach. Which shows now on the test run between calendar week 35 and 38, that the system, at least here, the one is running very stable.
That gives us now also the capacity to go at, at the full test run with 100% capacity in calendar week 40. Here you see line number one, green. Green boxes show that the line was regularly running. The violet box is the regular shutdown after three to four weeks. Blue boxes is when we had a lack of staff, and that was a lack of staff because we needed staff on the ramp-up of line two and three. You see that when line two was running, here, line two was running, and just before the start of line three, we needed a lot of staff from line number one. Each red boxes is a claim against the supplier. Claim because weldings were badly done, tanks were leaking, bad filters.
You see each time we had a claim on line number two, we did immediately also the claim on line number three, so that we were not losing time on line number three. All the orange boxes here were when we had to stop the unit for our process improvements, so to solve the foam in the oil tanks issue or crystals in the gas. You can see that the claims have stopped already in calendar week 29, 30 , and now we had the last process improvements in line number two. That last one was in calendar week 33 and 34, and then we had the process stability test. What we have changed here in line number two has been changed in line number three in calendar week 36 and 37, and now line number three is running.
You see here the green box here at the bottom here with 39. That's calendar week 39. That's the actual week. That's today. You see that from now on, we go in regular operation with all three lines. Three weeks operation, maintenance, three week operation, maintenance. Maintenance is not a full week. That's why I wrote here at the bottom, "Weeks are rounded up and down." Maintenance is just some days, but I could not do that presentation on a daily basis. That would have been much too complicated. For those who haven't seen the new line yet, that's the new line on status last month. You can see here the shredder, the two new reactors, the power plant in red. In yellow here, it's the exhaust gas cleaning system.
The milling and palletizing in blue. Oil tanks underground, and the controlled system for all three reactors now. So that is status quo. In the next four to six weeks, we will start the asphalt work. It's not perfect yet, but it works. We can work like it is today. So important milestone on our new line in Perl-Besch, also to keep you informed about that. So where we are there. So some data about the plant in Perl-Besch. So it has now a full size of 25,000 square meters, tire recycling capacity of 20,000 tons. So a tire shredder, so there will be, like in Dillingen, it will have its own tire shredder for eight tons per hour. There will be two reactors. There will be a gas power plant.
We have authorized in, or we have in the permitting procedure in Perl-Besch, both systems, so power generators and turbines, so that we are flexible on that perspective. Milling palletizer, so investment million is EUR 45 million . That will create 40 to 45 new jobs, and the annual turnover is higher than in the last expectation, it was EUR 15 million, due to the new offtakes agreement that we have. The operation time, most of the units will run 24/7 basis. Just the shredder will run on 16-hour per day basis due to the noise emission. Distance to nearby logistic com is, that's why we. How can I say that? I wrote that to show you how good that building site is placed. The railway is just next to the building site, so zero meters.
The harbor is just 100 meters away, and the next highway, the Autobahn A8, is six kilometers away. From a logistic perspective, the site is perfectly well situated. You also see it here on the top right. Here you see the drawing of the building site with all the buildings. That's, for example, the shredder. Here you see the two reactors. That are the bunkers for the tires. And the brown line here, that is, for example, the railway. You see that's really next to the site, and here you have a 3D picture of that. What is new since the last presentation? The amendment of the development of the plan in Perl-Besch took only two weeks of the development plan. In German, the correct name for that is Bebauungsplan.
So it took us only five months to get that through. To transform the area into industrial area, normally that is something that takes two to three years. Here was really politics involved, and I can just be grateful to Saarland, how much they helped us to get that through quickly. We were really strongly supported by all authorities here in Saarland. I have to say thank you for that. The building site is more or less cleared. From now on, there will be no public involvement anymore, so that is important to know. In that amendment of the development plan, the amendment of the Bebauungsplan, every authority has been asked.
So, just to give you some examples, the public has been asked, so public had the possibility to say something against our building, and even authorities like Deutsche Bahn, Telekom, the firefighters, police, NABU, Greenpeace, and I'll use a German word, Wasserstraßen- und Schifffahrtsverwaltung, so a nice German word. So the authorities for the river, electricity supplier, everybody was asked, 'cause everybody has something against the building of our plant, and there was some little complaints, but that could be addressed, answered, and everybody's fine. So the operating permit according to BImSchG is almost accomplished, and the permit to start the building is expected now every week. So we say before end of the year, we can start building there. And yeah, the operating company is found.
You see the logo on the top right corner. It looks quite similar to the Pyrum logo. It's Pyrum Green Factory II. So the legal form is a GmbH. It's a 100% daughter of the Pyrum Innovations AG, and it has today an equity of EUR 5.9 million . So what is new and what has happened in that plant. So very important milestone now in 2024 is a guaranteed input of tires and offtake of RCB. So for all of you, you have to develop the technology. You have to show that the technology works. That's fine. Okay, we have done it. Nobody's questioning that anymore. Then we had to prove that the oil can be sold. We have the big offtake agreement with BASF, so nobody's questioning anymore that the oil can be sold.
But the big question in last year was, is it possible to create a recovered carbon black that can be used by the market? That was the first question. That was answered end of last year with all the certificate that we passed, but I have a slide on that if we need that. But now what's the question? Okay, now you have the material, but does somebody buy it? Now we have, for the offtake agreements, we have two big offtakers. So we have Continental. We have signed a new offtake agreement for the recovered carbon black, in July 2024. It was even on the 13th, last day of July, that it was signed. That is a ten-year bankable offtake guarantee for the quantity of two, two full Pyrum plants. That means six reactors.
Just to tell you how important that is, usually the tire and car industry makes one- or two-year offtake agreement maximum. The fact that we have here a ten-year bankable offtake guarantee is a milestone. It's something that has never existed before, but Continental has understood that without that, it is hard to convince investors, and it's hard to convince banks. So with that contract, I can tell you, banks are now opening their ears and speaking to us because the whole model is now becoming bankable. New prices for the RCB, so we have now a price range between EUR 1,200 and EUR 1,800 per ton. We have received an advance payment from Continental, so that shows again the value of the contract. So it's not just a piece of paper.
We also received an advance payment on the future deliveries, and, but we are not allowed to tell the amount, but it was nice. And, yeah, there's a possibility also in that contract to increase the volumes, to double them, starting 2028. So, and, from the usage today already, so all forklift tires from Continental produced in their German plant in Korbach since calendar week 23, 2023 are already with Pyrum RCB. So if you are searching new tires for your forklifts, you know which one to buy, Conti from Korbach, after calendar week 23. And yeah, of course, I said before, Conti has announced to become 100% circular till 2050.
Schwalbe, we have also an offtake agreement, and Green Marathon is the tire you can already buy today, but there's been an official announcement to switch 70% of the whole Schwalbe production to Pyrum RCB soon. So there's also there will be soon a new offtake agreement so that 7% production is feasible, but that is soon to come. And negotiations for long-term offtake agreements with other premium tire manufacturers are ongoing, and I can tell you that the signature of Continental also helped a lot with that. And for the end-of-life tire input guarantee, also a question that we receive extremely often, "Okay, now you have the offtake for the RCB, you have the offtake for the oil. Steel is no big issue.
The process is working, but how will you ensure that you get enough tires in the future?" So Continental told us clearly that they just that they don't want to just buy RCB, they want a circular system. So they want also the right to deliver us tires, and by asking for the right to deliver tires, we were asking also for an obligation to deliver tires. So if we block capacities for Continental, they also have to oblige themselves to deliver us tires. That was accepted. There's also a pre-close for that in the RCB offtake agreement, and there will be a huge end-of-life tire. So ELT means end-of-life tires, for those who don't know that abbreviation. There will be an end-of-life tire contract that should be signed before end of 2024.
It's even written in the contract that both parties agreed to sign that contract as soon as possible. And with Schwalbe, we have already the Schwalbe recycling system, where 1,800 bike stores in Germany are participating. We could increase that quickly just by opening it to other countries, but we have a roadblock in there for the moment. We don't have enough capacity to do more than that today. So we are blocked now at one-third of the German market. To date, we have already taken in 1 million bicycle tires with that system, and of course, the idea is, of course, to expand that to whole Germany and to Europe. So there's now a solution and a long-term offtake for the RCB, and there is also a solution for the input of tires for the next years.
As said, that is the foundation for our rollout plan so that it can run. Here I just repeat, maybe some people have seen that slide already, how complicated it was to get the green light to put RCB in tires. It's not like the oil. The oil is decomposed in each molecule by BASF, and then we assemble, so all the quality control and certificates are with BASF for the recovered carbon black. We had to do all that certificates in the last one to one and a half year. EcoVadis Silver status, VDA 6.3 auditing of the automotive industry, ISCC PLUS, ISO 9001, ISO 14001. I had to change our company structure. All that was a long way to be allowed to do what we do today.
And I have to admit it, we did completely underestimate how hard that would be, and, but we did it, and even faster than the industry thought we could build it. So, and now here you have a new slide for the project, so the rollout plan. I tried to sum that up a little bit, not big Excel sheets that make it just complicated. So we have in the pipeline far over twenty projects, but I don't want to bother you with project that are in the thinking, or we are searching a building site, or we have no idea where we get the tires from. So project that are not clear, they are not in here.
So we have nine real projects, and I mean nine real project, that are projects that have a building site, that have started the permitting procedure, that have paid us money to start it, and we are doing the engineering work already there. And in 2024, four new came, so last year it was five, now we are already at nine project. These project are in six countries in Europe, and seven of them are already in the permitting procedure. And by seeing the map on the left side, you see that they are quite in Central Europe, but they are expanding all around Europe. We are in England, in England, in Sweden, in Greece, in Czech Republic, in Belgium, in Germany. Okay, four of them are in Germany.
And what is important here to really remember, in the past, we had a lot of gold diggers, I call them, because that were people having no money, no site, and no market entry, and they wanted to build Pyrum sites with us. The partners we have today are the market leaders, so REMONDIS, SUEZ, UNITANK, Schwalbe, SUEZ. So we have now really the companies that are able to build these plants with us, and they are not just dreaming about hopefully having one day a plant. So that Excel sheet here, I keep it just as a small reminder, so that are the project in more details. The black ticks here were ticks that were already existing last year. The green ticks were all new ticks that were newly added this year.
So you see the project are really advancing. So none of them was in the authorization process last year. Yeah, and I just see that I did a little mistake here in the authorization, but there's one tick missing here. But we will correct that, but you see that all projects are going forward. The only problem we have today, and that's why we haven't signed yet a sales contract for the whole plant, each plant needs FID, so final investment decision, and they all need the permit. So the final permit stamped by the authorities to get the FID, final investment decision, and we are really hoping that at least one of them gets the stamp before end of this year. But we can. If you put pressure on authorities, that's not helping. That's the bad thing about it.
So now, some of you should know it or have seen it already many times. There are some modification on that slide. So it is still very important to know that we have the BASF contract giving us EUR 50 million to finance plants. EUR 25 million are already available. With these EUR 25 million , we have created the new plant in Perl-Besch, and we have ordered already some long lead items to gain time there. And of course, we have as an obligation to find another EUR 50 million on the capital market as loans, as bond, as capital increase, or as investment from partners that invest in Pyrum plants, so to get the second EUR 25 million loan from BASF.
I can tell you we are quite far advanced in these discussions, but I'm not allowed to tell you today where we are exactly. But what helped a lot in this discussion now is the offtake guarantee from Continental. That was a thing that most investors and banks were waiting for, and we have that now since seven weeks. So that speeded up many discussions extremely, and that gives you also here that new business plan for a 20,000-ton plant. So, we are in the area of EUR 17 million, that is, possible maximal turnover of a plant. Gate fee EUR 2-EUR 2.3, that didn't change. Steel EUR 1.7 also didn't change.
So the oil, we are now in the area of EUR 650 per ton, and the RCB, we told you we are in a range of EUR 1,200-EUR 1,800, so taking the middle of that is EUR 1,500. It's, I'm not giving you here concrete numbers because we are not allowed to give you the concrete numbers. That's why we are speaking here in ranges. But for the calculation now, we take the middle of that range, and so we are EUR 10.6 million, approximately, turnover for the RCB. The direct cost, EUR 6.2; OpEx, EUR 4.9. EBITDA of about EUR 10 million, with an investment of EUR 50 million, in which we also added contingency. So all investors wants to see EUR 5 million contingency in the calculation of a plan to make it more plausible.
We each year pay back on EBITDA basis of about five years. That's it for my part. I will hand over to our CFO, Kai Winkelmann.
Yeah, good morning, everybody. Just to correct the sentence regarding the planning, the previous page, it is EUR 50 million without contingency, and we always have a range, EUR 50-55 million for the investment for our power plant. So now we're coming to the consolidated income statement for the first half of 2024. We generated sales at EUR 708,000, up 41%, compared to the same period of the previous year. With the expansion and optimization of the plant in Dillingen, we had own work capitalized at a level of EUR 3.6 million, compared to EUR 7.6 million. That shows that the work is almost done in Dillingen, and that we started with Perl-Besch.
But on the other side, this always is, this figure is connected to a plant purchase agreement, because when we have a plant purchase agreement with a client, we get a prepayment, and then we can activate this cost by ordering parts of the new plant parts. The total output so went down to EUR 4.5 million , after EUR 8.1 million in the previous period. Other operating income rose by more than 100%. We received an investment grant of EUR 531,000 in this period for generating new workspaces. The expenses for raw materials is the part where we receive materials to build a plant, mostly. And personal expenses went up to EUR 3.1 million .
This was driven by new staffing and, by, let's say, the new contracts with existing staff. Other operating expenses were possible to bring them down by 6.7% to EUR 1.6 million. So EBITDA is almost on the same level than the previous year at - EUR 3.2 million. Depreciation, about EUR 1.1 million, and an EBIT of EUR 4.3 million resulted in a net income in EUR 4.7 million. This was lower than expected, but we are coming to the... So it was, let's say, less bad than expected. But we are coming to that after the next page.
Regarding the balance sheet, we now have non-current assets of EUR 48 million, reflecting the first plant purchase parts in Perl, where we already ordered the reactors, especially. Current assets went up. We had a payout from the loan agreement with BASF, so we had cash at hand in bank of EUR 9.5 million. Equity went down based on the loss for the period, to EUR 70.6 million, and an equity ratio to 29.8%. We have changed our forecast for the ongoing for this year, because we see that the total costs will go down for this year.
So we have expected earnings before tax at around -EUR 10 million to -EUR 12 million, instead of the forecast at the beginning of the year, from -EUR 11 million to -EUR 13 million. But we also need to lower our expectation for the revenues, because we see that the fourth quarter will be a good one. But that there's no possibility to get all the revenues that were missing in the first and second quarter, especially as the RCB production were still lower than expected. But as Pascal said, this is mostly solved now, so we expect EUR 1.9 million to EUR 2.4 million in revenues for the whole year.
We also need to lower our expectation for the total output to EUR 10 million, instead of EUR 25-30 million, for, based on the basis for the expectation beginning of the year used to be that it was possible to sign a plant purchase contract with a client, but this could just become when the authorities send the authorization to the companies, and then we can start to order plant parts. That's it for the figures. Thank you very much. So I hand back to Pascal.
I'm not so the Zoom specialist. I had to see how I turn back the mute. So I can tell you, we are doing our best to get the plant purchase done that year, the first one, but the biggest issue are the authorities. We have that new slide that was quite a little bit important for me to also to put that in, to show you what are our priorities and what are the next step to achieve these priorities, and also to give you a little timeline where we are here. So first, one of the biggest priorities is get access to funds to finance the second half of the rollout plan and Pyrum, of course. So in order to achieve that, we have a very clear path forward.
In fact, TAD 2 and 3, and that's what most of banks, investors, funds, et cetera, are waiting for. They all want to see TAD 2 and 3 prove 100% operation, so 100% throughput, and about 1000 operating hours. So the operating hours we are doing today at 80%, they're already counting in the 1000 hours. But we also need to show that. So we're already working on the 1000 operating hours, but they all want also to see that we are able to get at 100%. And as said, next week, we will run line two for the first time at 100%. So we expect that in quarter number four, 2024, we can get that point done.
Most investors also want to see a technical due diligence, approval from external institute, proving that TAD 2 is really running. Of course, we can say that TAD 2 and 3 are running well, but they want to have that proven by an external institute. That is ongoing, so we know who is doing that. So that will be hopefully finished in Q1 2025. I tried this year, but no, lower than you expected. So don't expect it to be too quick, but it can be quick. Legal due diligence analysis for the offtake agreements for the oil and RCB, that's just a formality, according to me. That's lawyers who have to check the offtake agreement and see that they are valid, but I don't see any problems in that.
So that is timeline latest for Q1 2025. And we are soon doing a non-deal roadshow to finally explore all possibilities that we have and to speak with investors we didn't speak before, so we have the full picture of the market. So that is done in Q4 2024. So then we think that financing for the roll out is. We have ticked all the boxes. A big box that had to be ticked, and that is ticked, is offtake agreement for RCB and stable long-term offtake. So we have that. Now, the second big priority is increase as soon as possible the RCB production volumes, because as soon as we increase the volumes, we increase our turnover. That is the quickest and possible way to get the turnover up.
So the possibility we have is increasing the capacity of the mill and pelletizer one, so that's the one we have. We found finally the keys to increase the capacity of that one. For the moment, it has an output, a final output at the end of the line of 45%-50% of what we put in at the beginning. So if you put in at the beginning of the plant, 1000 kilos, at the end, with finished pellets, you get 500. So half of the material that we put in at the beginning has to be reworked, so we send back at the beginning of the milling and pelletizer. So that is a problem since we own that unit. But we found out that after the pelletizer, the good quality is at 90%.
So meaning that 40%-45% of the good pellets are in fact destroyed after the pelletizer in the sieve and the conveyors that are bringing the good pellets to the big bag station, where it is filled in big, big bags. So in fact, we are in fact producing 90%, but the conveying systems behind the pelletizer are destroying the pellets again. So now we know where the problem sits, and now we can solve it. So that is planned before end of 2024 to change the conveying system to the big bags. They are soft moving systems with slow compressed air impulses that are not destroying pellets. And we know that because that is also the conveying system which we will have in the new mill and pelletizer for line two and three. There will be no conveyors, no bucket conveyors.
There will be that impulse air transportation system so that the pellets remain intact. So we will also put that now in line number one. So Continental audit, the problem is that we are not allowed today to use the crude carbon from line number two and line number three in the mill and pelletizer of line number one, because that need to be audited and permitted, and for that, we needed the project stability ratio, what I explained you before, where we reached 3.6. So we will get that audit done by Conti in October 2024. We have already the dates. And of course, what brings the biggest step towards a higher turnover will be that the mill and pelletizer of line number two and Dillingen are installed. So that will be up to six times bigger than the old mill and pelletizer.
The mill is here. The mill has arrived. We are doing now the groundwork to install the mill. Parts of the pelletizer should all arrive until end of 2024. At least that is what we have been told by the suppliers, but I can also tell you that nobody gives you good guarantees for the moment. Everybody is complaining about supply chain all around the world. But we are really doing our best on a daily basis to make things quicker, so that latest in Q2 2025, the new mill and pelletizer is really running. But believe me, that's really a daily work to stay behind the supplies. So install as soon as possible, the new line in Perl-Besch. That is, of course, also one of the priorities, but for that, we need to finish the financing, which is priority one.
So we are doing our best in Perl-Besch to get there quickly by preparing the site, which is done. Finish the detail engineering so that we can start immediately building steelwork and tubing once final financing is there. So that will also be done before end of the year, and as soon as we get the BImSchG 8a permit to start digging, then we will start digging and start the groundworks. And also an issue that we really have to address and work on, on the priorities is stabilize staff situation. For that, we are working already on a new staffing team. We have a new staff, a head of staff that started, a very experienced man who has done that for twenty years, and who is very experienced in getting good staff.
We have changed our internal structures to make the company more attractive for employees and work times more flexible, also to get people. We also hire now spare staff, so to ensure really the 24/7 operation, so that we don't need to take backup teams from line number one, and to really build up backups team for all three lines. And of course, we are starting, and that is something new. We recruit already now recruiting the new staff for the new mill and pelletizer and for Perl-Besch. We start already now to search people for there, so that once they are built, we can start much quicker there and don't lose time with staff issues once everything is built. That's it for my side. I thank you very much for your attention, and if there are questions, feel free.
Thank you so much for your presentation and the dive into your first half year. So as already mentioned, we will be happy to receive your questions. Kindly note that we only accept questions in our chat box, and we already received a couple of questions during the presentation, and the first one is regarding page number three. So the question belongs to the pie chart, so, "Is it for Europe or for Germany?" Is the question.
That's for Germany.
All right, so quick answer. So next question: "On what it will be depend if Pyrum uses microturbines or engine technology on future plants?
On what it depends? It really depends on what you have as surrounding. One, it's the legal, so it depends on what emissions are we allowed to have and what is the customer's primary need. Do he needs more electricity, or do he needs or her need more heat? So that is one of the biggest questions.
Okay, next one is: "So which plant did you intend to sell at the beginning of the year, which did not work out?"
Okay, it's not that it doesn't work out, but we expected that the Czech project would be a bit quicker, but we are depending on the authorities and on the processing, let's say. We expected that the Greek project might be already, let's say, starting with plant purchase agreement in 2024. But we, during this indication here, we said, even if we would sign it tomorrow, for the rest of the year, we would first start detail engineering, and ordering will not drive to EUR 25-30 million that we used to have in the planning before.
Maybe I have to add something there. The Czech project has already asked for the permission in May. That was refused. In summer, all the authorities traveled to Dillingen, so we had 20 to 25 authorities here, or people from the authorities. They were really impressed after that. That should have been done before the first attempt to get the permit. After that, we got full support from the authorities, and now doing the second attempt to get the permit, everything works now very smooth in Czech Republic. In Greece, they are working, waiting for the green light from the subvention from the state. That should have been given in June, then were elections in Greece, then the new political parties had to stabilize.
So yeah, elections did cause a lot of delay in Greece so that they could only form the new juries for the grant agreement last month.
All right. Thank you so much. Further question, "Investment increased from EUR 40 million to EUR 50 million since the last presentation. What are the main cost drivers for that?"
Okay-
We used 50 million EUR already during our AGM, but compared to last year, we have much more details today than we used to have before. When we started the planning, let's say, three years ago, we were working on expectations, and now we are working, we are planning on facts, yeah, that's the core difference, let's say, and we have some additional parts. Let's say, a tire tumbler costs around EUR 800,000, and so on and so on. So there are some parts that have been invented and where we found out that it's that there are better technologies.
All right. "Could you make an estimation on the impact of falling interest rates in the EU on the investments?"
It depends. If you look on the investor or just on the CapEx, we don't see changes. For the investor, it might make it easier to get a finance and have a higher internal rate of return... but we actually more see an impact on Pyrum side because we see that we get reasonable indications for discussions with banks now.
Okay. The around eight million of output expected in 2024, is that the plant in Perl-Besch?
It's a mixture of sales. The first plant parts that we ordered for Perl-Besch and the final investments in Dillingen, what we show in the total output.
Okay, next question: Does the fact that TAD 1 runs with, on a classical gas combustion generator lead to limited RCB output, as you indicated that the heat generated from gas generator is not enough to dry RCB?
No, no, no, no, no, no. That is easy explained. The line number one, the mill and pelletizer from line number one, has a gas burner. So in order to dry the pellets, we use gas from the city to dry the pellets, because the heat of the power generator is not enough to dry the pellets. So the fact that we have now on the new line, turbines, we don't need a gas burner, and we don't need gas from the city in order to operate the milling and pelletizing process. But anyway, the new line, the new mill and pelletizer for line number two, has gas burners included as a backup system so that we can also mill and pelletize recovered carbon black in case the three reactors are offline and the power plant is offline, so that we have maximum flexibility.
All right. Could you give us some details about the expected volume of the RCB production in the third and fourth quarter?
That really depends a lot on how quick they can find now if it's the sifter conveyor or the big bag station who is destroying a lot of pellets, and how quick can we get the parts of that. So whatever I say now, it would be just a guess. We see that already it went up between quarter two and quarter three, because we have more process stability there. But the only thing to increase on a quickly basis the RCB output is to reduce the amount of pellets that have to be reworked, so that are sent back to the beginning of the process at the end. And that's. We found out now that the pellets are destroyed. You know, there's a sieve and a conveyor, and then it goes into the big bags.
The sieve is only there to extract too big and too small pellets and send them back, and in fact, there's not many too big pellets. There's a lot of too small pellets, so powder, that needs to go back at the beginning of the process. And my personal opinion is that the sieve is shaking too quick, and that that is destroying some pellets. But we finally found out that it is in that area, because it's only since about six months that we have full access to the plant, and that the supplier is out of the system, and that we are in full control of what happens there.
All right, so we have a couple of questions left, just to give you an update. When are you having a great formal opening with TVs and newspapers of your Dillingen plant?
I think first we will do everything that the milling and pelletizing is up and running. So this is in delivery and has to be completed. So I would say beginning of next year.
But we are trying to start now to get known better.
Yes.
So we have, for the first time, I would say, since Pyrum existed in the last six, eight weeks, we started to get, to make marketing campaigns. There are things to come. We have also, we are now, connected to influencer network so that we can hire influencers on a quicker basis and, get us more known at younger, mainly from younger people. Yeah, we are also negotiating with a very famous, German person who could become our testimonial, so to get us known better. Yeah, we are working on that.
When do you expect first approval from authorities and FID? Where will it be?
Cross fingers, I hope 2024.
Well, yeah, we...
Uh.
W e see the check very very on a first place, actually.
Yeah. Our supervisory board asked us recently, "Give us a percentage of how far are they?" And I would say they are at 90%-95%.
Yes.
Okay.
So it's a question of authorities, but as I said before, putting pressure on authorities makes it just slower.
Okay, next question: How are you progressing with wind power blades recycling? Are you looking for a partner? Are you talking to blade manufacturers like TPI Composites, Composites?
What is new on that aspect is that we declared a patent. So the work that we have done in the last two years, we have now declared a patent. And our R&D department is working on the next grant agreement to go on the next level. So the next level would be go from semi-industrial stage to industrial stage. Of course, we are talking with players, but yeah, honestly speaking, it's not on the top priorities. We are working on it slowly but surely. And I said the newest development is that we have declared now patents so that the know-how we have developed is secured.
You deserve for tire recycling to get CO2 permits. I appreciate it must be difficult to convince authorities. It must have a material impact on your financials. Are you discussing this with the authorities?
Of course, we are always in ongoing talks. It's very hard in Germany because in Germany, the system shows that you just get CO2 certificates when you avoid electricity usage that you had before, but not for technology that from the beginning avoids CO2 footprint. But we are in deep discussions also in other European countries that at least in one it might start, but this is a really, really hard process, and it's more mid-term than short-term.
I believe Pyrum is one of the most interesting listed recycling companies. My worry is that you will be taken by private equity guys too early and too cheaply. Are you already getting PE takeover proposals, and what is your attitude to takeovers?
I would not comment that.
Okay. The installation of the new pelletizing machine is planned for the end of this year. The ramp-up of the production should then follow in the first half of 2025. Which RCB output do you expect for the first and the second half of 2025?
We are in the planning. We expect that in the first half of 2025, the mill and pelletizer will be up and running for TAD 2 and 3, but we are not expecting any revenues there to be on the safe side, and we expect for the second half then that we really ramp up quickly and, I'm just checking. We expect that up to 4,000 tons for the total year, so 2,000 tons is that's what we want to-
For the second half.
... actually, we want to reach for the second half. Yeah.
But in the ramp-up process, in the first half, there will be material produced.
Yes.
... but it is only allowed to be sold once you get the green light from the audits. And then, after you have the audit from Continental and Schwalbe, the material that has already been produced in the first half is also permitted, so that can also be sold then in the second half once the audits are done. But in order to pass the audits, you have to prove process stability, and our goal is to get that before end of first half of the year. And then what we have produced in the first half of the year could also be sold in the second half.
Mm-hmm.
Stock is important. We need space for storage.
Okay, next question. We don't see any progress on the project, REVALIT. What is the actual status of the project?
The actual status is that there are four owners, let's say, and they, the others were responsible for getting a plant site, and we have not put that much pressure on that because we had so many new projects that were convincing. But it might be that REVALIT will not be part of the mid-term future, if it is not possible, let's say, to speed up the project.
Let's say that the REVALIT guys, the other three parties involved in REVALIT are from the building sector, and we all know that the building sector is struggling with the high interest rates, and it was their job to find the building site, to prepare the building site and all that stuff, but with all the problems with high interest rates, our three partners had to work on their own businesses, and they had other priorities in the last year, so we were not pushing them too hard because we can understand that there are moments in life you have other priorities than investing in something new, and as we have enough other project, we let them do as quick as they can.
So then we have a question concerning an outlook for 2025. How's the production schedule plan for Dillingen TAD 1 to 3 look like in 2025, and what is the expected output and tons per year for RCB?
Let's say, the forecast for 2025 will be published beginning of the next year. Because we first want to see how stable the processes are, and we are planning already with our teams from the production. This is too early to say. But what we said before, we really want to speed up and receive the max output end of the first half of 2025.
Okay. If it's not possible at the moment to get further equity, what would be the alternative?
We're always discussing regarding, let's say, every instrument that is possible in the market. So, we are talking about equity. That's what we always said in the report today, that we are organizing a roadshow starting today with ICF Bank in Frankfurt to have a look on the market, especially regarding smaller capital increase. On the other side, we have always discussions on the finance side, and deep discussions on that side for project finance for at least the next two plants for Pyrum. As you know, that up to 50% of the projects, of the first project could be financed with the BASF loan, but not everything.
And, a third possibility would be, let's say, financing directly in the project companies and, convertible bonds. But, the bond side, we are not ready for that. That's what the market told us last year.
There are also new things that I learned. There are also things like a preferred capital or things like that. So we are really looking at everything, but even though we would like to finance everything with loans, we cannot do everything with loans.
Yeah.
That is simply from a... But Kai, you can better explain that.
Yeah, we actually see a good window, and that's why we start a roadshow, and then we will see in the next weeks what's coming out of that.
Okay. So next question: Can you tell something on the shareholder structure, and how do you plan to increase the share price?
Yes, Pascal already said we are doing now more marketing, more influencing, more on the social media and, on the other side, organizing roadshows, participating on the German Equity Forum, and, hopefully producing good news regarding the process and, everything that's happening at Pyrum. We have a share that is traded on very low volume, and we see that there is still some pressure from the U.S., and that's always, let's say, in the order book you see in Oslo. During the IPO, we had some U.S. investors, and since the Silicon Valley Bank problems, we saw that there seems to be some pressure. We talked to some of these funds.
They all said it has nothing to do with Pyrum. For us, it's a matter of time that they are out. Mostly we want to drive our share price by facts that we present good figures in the future.
Right.
There's no way to influence the share price.
No
... than instead of doing our job well, publishing good numbers, and hoping that those people who want to exit the company due to geopolitical or political reasons or whatever, we cannot change their minds. So we have just to sit that out, but that has also been said in our last newsletter.
Okay, so two questions left. What is the status of the project with SUEZ in U.K.? Has the previous year one agreement to set the foundation of the project been extended, and when announcements are expected?
SUEZ is quite easy to explain. SUEZ had to change the site. There was a project announced, a big Pyrum project was announced in the UK called Wastefront, and the site where SUEZ wanted to build was more or less just next to that. Rumors in the markets are now saying that Wastefront has problems with that, but I don't want to comment on that. I can just tell you that SUEZ has now changed the site where they want to build the plant to be far more distanced from the site if Wastefront is building something, and SUEZ told us clearly that they are one of those who want to see the first line of our last slide I showed you before.
SUEZ is really one of the investors who is waiting for that first line here. They want to see the 100% operation of TAD 2 and 3, and they want to see the 1,000 operating hours. Then I think it will go quickly there because a lot of it is prepared.
All right, and the last question is, will you publish this recording and the presentation on your homepage so the participants can...?
Yes. As in the past, we will publish the presentation, and we're always stopping, let's say, recording after the presentation. I think there was one more question regarding the shareholder structure, and there I really like to refer to the half-year reporting. We have a lot of stuff in that. And, about 10% of the shares are with Pascal Klein still, 10% with Amel Holding, it's a family of Pascal Klein. We have many of the shareholders from the beginning, like Jürgen Opitz, who is one of our board members from the supervisory board. He is around 8%. BASF has 7.9%, Benefin, 7.1%. These are the core shareholders, let's say, from the time before the IPO in Oslo.
Since today, we have more than 5,500 shareholders in total that are split over the other 55% that are missing in the calculation, I thought.
Right. Thank you for clarification. So with this, we will come to the end of today's call. So thank you everyone for your shown interest and all your interesting questions. And a big thank you also to the gentlemen for the presentation and for answering. So from my side, I wish you all a lovely weekend. So, and, hand back for some final remarks.
Yeah, we thank you very much that you connected to the presentation, and we are looking forward to see one or the other on the German Equity Forum or during the roadshow that we start today with ICF Bank. Thank you very much.
Yep. Thank you also from my side. Have all a nice day and a nice weekend, and hope to see you all soon.