Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the Pyrum Innovations AG due to the publication of the results of the financial year 2025. I'm delighted to welcome CEO Pascal Klein and CFO Kai Winkelmann, who will start their presentation shortly. Kindly note that by now every participant is in a listen-only mode, but after the presentation, we will move on to a Q&A session in which you will be allowed to place your question in the chat box. With this, I hand over to you, Mr. Klein.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and also from my side, a very warm welcome. I will start with the presentation, with more or less data from the plant and the new information we have for you. Later on, Kai, in the second part, will present to you the numbers. Everybody should now see my screen. I hope that is the case. Let's start. As already said, Kai will be presenting after me, and then myself. I would like really to start with the market itself. Those who have already seen those presentations with Pyrum know that slide a little bit, mainly the left part, showing how much tires we have worldwide. It's still about 31,000,000 tons per year.
In Europe, still 3,400,000 to 3,600,000 tons per year. Not really big changes there, even though we see a slight uptrend here. What I really would like to emphasize here on that slide, and that is something what makes me extremely proud, is that in the last years we were not visible in the market. If you see now the numbers for 2025 in Germany, we have a burning rate of 17% of tires, which has been going down. It was 35%. We see here a clear trend that CO2 emission laws, CO2 costs, et cetera, start to have a wheel, in fact, in the simple burn of tires. Granulates, which is used for children playground, soccer fields, et cetera, is quite stable.
It is with 35% not moving this much till now. From a regular tire side, there will be a huge change in 2031. The export has been going drastically up. Why? Because if we burn less, waste has to go somewhere, and one of the biggest and easiest solution, like always, is simply we export the waste and get rid of it, and it's not our problem anymore. We went up from 10% to 23%. What makes me the most concerned is that the unknown part went up to 23%, and most of that are illegal exports, and therefore we have also, increasing regulations that will be come about that. I will tell you more about that later on.
In 2025, you see here with 2% of the German market share, Pyrum. We have done approximately 10,000 tons last year, even though the plant was not running at full capacity the full year on. It just started last year with new lines 2&3. Even though we were able now to recycle already 2% of the German market. Hopefully, that small green bar on the diagram will go much bigger in the next years. That's what we mainly work on. It has to because export will be mainly banned already this year. Part of it, granulate will die out due to microplastic regulations. As said, I will tell you more about that on a separate slide. Here we still have our flow diagram on what the plant looks like.
I'm sorry to repeat that for some people, there are also mainly new investors in this call. For those who are brand new for the first time at the Pyrum presentation, I would really like to sum up again where we are and what the plant does. We still make 1 ton of tires per hour as input stream, which is paid for. We receive a gate fee for that. It is shredded. We extract steel, which is 15% to 25% approximately, then we extract the textile fiber, which is 0% to 10%, all depending on the input. Bike tires have, of course, more textile in it percentage-wise than a truck tire, for example. At the end, we have an average of 700 kg of rubber granulate coming out of 1 ton of tires.
From here, let's say the magic begins. Our patent and process starts. We take these 700kg of rubber granulate per hour and transform that into our so-called and newly called TTO, which is through trademark, ThermoTireOil, which gives you 250kg/h . If you start from a full tire, you can say it's about 25% of the tires becomes oil. The TTB, our ThermoTireBlack, is about 310kg/h , about 31%. That is then milled, pelletized, and goes then to the end customers like Continental or Schwalbe and newly also now in the pigment industry and in some applications in OEMs for car door sealings, window rubbers, et cetera.
That is brand new, but sadly, I'm not allowed yet to give you the brands that are behind it, but hopefully soon we can publish that. From the reactor comes also out the oil, which is slightly clean, goes to BASF, and is used in a multiple type of applications from VAUDE, from Mercedes-Benz. I have already told that in many other presentations. You will also find particles of our oil in ibuprofen [inaudible] when you have your next headache, so you can think about us. The gas goes either in turbines, which is our new system in line 2& 3, to create heat. That's the process which is known since some years now to most shareholders. Let's go where we standing, where we are standing now. The shredding line is running at 100% stable and reliable.
That was not the case a year ago. We had a lot of maintenance stops and a lot of bottleneck situations here, but more about that on the next slide. That is the Pyrum patented process, which is also running stable at 100%, which is what makes me most proud because, in fact, the newest and most modern part of the plant is the most reliable as of today. Comes the power plant, that is also running stable, but has some minor software issues, but more on that later on. It's nothing critical, but as always, when you build something completely new, there is a learning curve. It's not something that is blocking the process on a daily basis. Let's say we have monthly shutdowns of a half day or something like that per month due to that.
It's nothing that is really sensible, but it's something to be solved. You have the milling and pelletizing, which was the biggest bottleneck in the plant. It is still a bottleneck, that has changed now a little bit. We are now in a continuous and stable operation of the mill and pelletizer. Even for those who know it, the dosing system is now running stable. Not at full power yet, it's running stable. We don't need to do the stop on-off system like we did before. There is another increase of capacity planned in Q3 2026. Well, as of now, we can produce enough, more on that on the next slides. This is again the plant, just what I explained to you here in real life image.
Here you see the shredder, same color than on the slide before in orange. The Pyrum unit in green, same as on the slide before. In yellow, the power plant, also same color. Here you see the mill and pelletizer. What was not on the slide before is here the tank in violet, the control room in red, the storage area, and the maintenance building. That picture was roughly one year ago. You see it's quite like clean, quite proper, and many people said, okay, that plant is not really running. It's too clean to be running. That's why this morning I took a quick decision. I took the drone, went out, and made a picture of this morning. That's what the plant looks like just right now.
On that slide here, you see a comparison Skyview April 2025 against Skyview of today, 8th of May. That picture is just one hour old. You see on the left last year and today, you see it changed a lot. First you see the white smoke coming out, very intense. That shows that the reactor are running at a very good stack. You see here that our tire storage is now completely full, which is good. We have now a certain tire stock for several weeks. Beside of that, due to the more stable operation of the shredder, we also have a very good storage of rubber granulate, but that later on. Here in the back you see a lot of big bags standing around.
That is recovered carbon black, that is finished, or rubber granulate that is stored for, yeah, in case there's anything with the shredder. You see it is really a lot going on on the side, and really it's now busy outside. Let's go now on the facts about the different parts of the plant. Let's start with the shredding unit. As already said, it's running at full performance only since second half of last year. Before we had some struggle, mainly with crashes. We did a lot of modification on the shredding line, and we added a night shift for maintenance because key in the shredding plant is to have always good knives and sharp knives, and the best to do that is to do it overnight.
We are not allowed to shred overnight due to noise limitations, but you can do the maintenance overnight. That has really drastically improved the throughput. The performance of the shredder was about a year ago, 40 to 50 tons per day. Today it is 60 to 70 tons per day. Now we are really in the area what we need. The new weekly average is 300 tons per week to 350 tons per week. Before it was around 200 tons per week. That was quite often an issue why we had to reduce the throughput on the reactors. The reactors, the Pyrum reactors were not really the bottleneck of the plant. The bottleneck was the shredder, who was sometimes not producing enough granulate.
With this well-running shredder now, we were able to build up a rubber granulate storage of 16 days. That we call it now crash approved. Sometimes, and that is sadly the reality in a recycling plant, you have things in the waste that don't belong there, like for tires, for example, a brake disc or a big piece of metal. If that falls into the shredder, that causes a crash and meaning that the shredder needs to stop. Depending on what broke inside the shredder, the crash can take up to 14 days, so two weeks.
Even if we now have a crash, and last year we had three crashes, even if now we have a crash, we can continue to operate the Pyrum plant nonstop, and that is only something that we are ready to do right now. We build up that storage only in the last month, in 2026. All that's to prove stability of the process, and of course, increasing revenues afterwards. About the Pyrum plant itself, our reactors and the power plant, TAD 2 and TAD 3 are running stable at several production daily basis. As most of you know, TAD 1 is in refit to catch up with the volumes of TAD 2 and 3. We were able, and that is a very proud new evolution, TAD 2 and 3 have no longer maintenance intervals.
Meaning when the plant was designed and planned, we were planning to stop each reactor after three and a half, four weeks for three, four days maintenance stop. Again, we run 24/7 for three and a half, four weeks. The result is that we are more in the area of eight weeks nonstop production before we need to do a maintenance stop, which has approximately the length that we have planned before. We are more than happy with that. The power plant is composed of five micro turbines. We have to admit that the turbines cause almost no problems. They are running stable 24/7. It's really has a satisfactory performance. The only issue we sometimes have is that the power plant is so complex. Every month there is something happening that did never happen before.
That has also been the case in the Pyrum reactors with the huge difference that in the Pyrum software, we as Pyrum, with our own programming team, we can react immediately. If something is not doing as it should in the Pyrum plant, our programmers are entering the source code 24/7 and can quickly do modifications. Sadly, the power plant software was not done by ourself, we depend always on the external company to do modifications. They are not working 24/7, if something happens overnight, we need to stop the production for several hours overnight until the next morning they can access the software. In order to do so, we have solved a lot of the software issues. Before we had weekly issues, now it's more monthly issues.
We are now planning to do our own software for the power plant so that we are also quicker in acting in that and also have our own capacities available 24/7 for that, making it more stable. Now that what people is, are interested most in, I think, is the mill and pelletizer status quo. The good news is that we finally passed the internal approval for regular operation accomplished end of 26 April . You have to know that in the VDA 6.3 permitting or auditing, it's the automotive auditing, there has to be first internal auditing with all Pyrum members. The plant director of production, the board members, our quality and maintenance head, and we need all to vote for the proven of stability and continuous quality.
That is a hard document which is controlled then by the auditors, by the external ones. That was in fact the last missing document so that we were allowed to produce in serial and send out RCB from the new and biggest mill and pelletizer for recovered carbon black on Earth. We are now on a stable daily production with in spec material output of 750kg/h . Today's capacity is, for the moment, enough to fulfill the orders now from Continental, Schwalbe, and one new customer. Since last week, now we are packaging finished product in big packs. Another good news is we had the audit by Continental this week on 6 May . We expect the result end of May. If we passed, then we can finally start serial deliveries from MID 2.
What has been done in the last month was a lot. I can tell you we have spent day and night in the mill and pelletizer to solve all the issues we had. On the mill and pelletizer, we were able to, I said, stabilize the process and the quality so that everything that comes out is in spec and stable. We were able to, together with the supplier of course, to increase the capacity to the guaranteed capacity. In fact, the mill for itself and the pelletizer for itself are producing enough as it was guaranteed by the supplier. The only bottleneck that is still in the plant is the transportation and dosing system between the mill and the pelletizer, where we found out that the dosing system itself is not really the bottleneck.
The bottleneck is the transportation between the mill and pelletizer. That has now been tested in industrial scale. Engineering is done, the pieces are ordered. We will get now a triple transportation system between the mill and pelletizer. Not just one, but three transportation system in between, which are quite easy to install because they are not so big, and that will then increase again the throughput drastically in Q3, hopefully. I added here a picture so that everybody can see it because most people don't believe it to me. The picture you see here on the right corner is the recovered carbon black in the bunker between the mill and the pelletizer. That is like a boiling soup. I really like It's not a moving picture, but you see all these craters, all these small volcanoes.
It is really boiling inside. That is not because it's hot, because the material, it's not hot and it's cold. It's the air, the air that is trapped inside the freshly milled material that is boiling out. It really looks like if you're cooking a soup and it's starting to boil, that is how it looks in the bunker in between. By changing the dosing system, we are not adding oxygen in the bunker, but we are taking out the oxygen between the mill and pelletizer, which is extremely increasing the density and afterwards also the throughput. That has, as said, been tested now in industrial scale and works. It's not. There are no questions left, in fact. We are very confident that everything is done shortly. As said, we start now serial production and deliveries.
Allow me to sum up our major USPs that we were able to accomplish last year. Most of them, some of them have already been started the year before, but what have we really on paper now and hard submitted in the last two years, that is mainly that we are now TRL 9 certificated, so we have Technical Readiness Level 9 out of 9. That makes a company like us for the first time bankable, so that is an achievement that we achieved only last year. Last year we also created the new, two new brand names, so beginning this year, TTO for the oil and TTB for the black. Now we know that our oil has a biogene content of up to 50%, which allows us theoretically to make green fuels or green jet fuels. That was theory last year.
Now, since beginning of 2026, we have the ISCC EU certification for the oil, which was very hard to get, and honestly speaking, we were not thinking to get it. It was a hard journey to get to it. Now with the ISCC EU certificate, we are allowed to sell the fuel in the fuel market and even for green jet fuels and things like that. The TTB can now really replace carbon black. That's also now proven with the audits on the mill and pelletizer. Yeah, we all have to remember that 60% to 70% of the European market for carbon black still depends on supplier like Russia. Full energy sustaining is proven with the big power plant that is running since last year.
We all have to keep in mind, even though that the BASF contract is a little bit older, what makes us really unique compared to some of our competitors in the market is that we have a long-term 10 year offtake agreement with BASF. We have a 10 year offtake guarantee for the carbon black with Continental. Since last year, 2025, we also have a 10 year offtake agreement for the carbon black with Schwalbe and delivery of bike tires, which is by the way, ramping up quite quickly recently. We are getting more and more bike tires in, and thanks to some modifications on our old shredding line, we are really now recycling a lot of bike tires for Schwalbe and the Schwalbe Recycling System.
Another big achievement last year is that for the first time we were able to get an EIF, European Investment Fund, funding for the project in Greece of EUR 29.4 million in November 2025. That is now the proof that all the other projects, I can tell you there are already two other Pyrum projects in Europe that have now applied for the same grant, because we have even been encouraged by the European Union to apply with all of our plants now for that grant, which will change the financial stability of each plant drastically if now each plant is getting such a support. What else can I say?
The biggest German tire brands, the biggest recyclers in Europe, the biggest tanking operators in Europe and worldwide, and the biggest chemical company on earth, they cannot all be wrong by working with us. That is, I would say, really a big, good summary on what we have really achieved in the last two years. Now let's look at the future because there's a lot of coming in the future, mainly on the regulatory part. I have to tell you that mainly over the last half year, or a little bit more than the last half year, we as Pyrum and mainly also myself, spending a lot of time with politicians and lobbyists in Brussels to find out what we can do and what is about to come.
There's a lot that concerns us, like, for example, the Circular Economy Act, the EU Waste Shipment Regulation, Ecodesign, and ELVR, our End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation, REACH for microplastics, et cetera. The good thing about all that is it's all playing towards us. It's really, in fact, if we could have a wish list on what should the regulatory side do for us, that would be the wish list. To give you more insights about that, on the next slide, we have the details about some of these things. I'm not really speaking about all of them, but just about the major ones. We have the EU Waste Shipment Regulations from 2024 that is coming into place now, that is limiting the export of tires.
As we have seen on the very first slide, a lot of tires are exported. Now we have already a ban starting this year for non-OECD countries. Experts are concluding that export ban which starts in 21 May this year already, so already in two weeks, less than two weeks, that will keep 800,000 more tons of tires here in Europe, and that ban will be extended. Politicians have understood that tires or rubber waste or any kind of waste is not a waste, it is a resource. You just need to transform it properly. As we are so resource depending, it needs to stay here.
Another mind shift that I have seen in the last months in the political area is Pyrum is not seen anymore as a simple waste collector and waste treater or recycling company. No. We are seen more and more as supplier of critical raw materials. That is the core goal in the European Union for the next five years, is make Europe independent from critical material imports. We are seen now as a supplier of critical raw materials, which we are, by the way. End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation, that comes in force now in 2026 according to what we know. The goal behind that is that cars are recycled and new cars need to contain more circular content.
The last text that we all have is that, it's not published yet, but this is market news, 15% after six years and 25% after 10 years need to be recycling content in a new car. That's what we do. We take old tires, old rubber waste. We also do test ones here in our lab with dashboards and other things, change that into recovered carbon black and oil. That goes then to BASF or tire manufacturers, and they make parts for the new cars. With the ELVR, Pyrum is becoming more less an obligation for the car industry to use our raw materials to make new cars. What is better than that? Making it more or less an obligation to use raw materials made from waste in Europe and waste from cars.
That is, that should come into place now this year in 2026. Circular Economy Act, that is more in the area of more secondary raw materials, increased demand for recycling materials. The EU Microplastic Directive pushes down the microplastic content, particles will be banned under 5mm , that is really being a big issue for the whole rubber granulate market, which has still 35% of the used tire market. That will, again, be a hard hit for the children playground, soccer fields, and all that stuff. That market is really under pressure from the regulation side. That is, again, a big opportunity for us and our market. Many people are also asking where we are with our second plant, with the Perl-Besch project, GreenFactory II.
The news there is that the site is prepared, that we had our, as you see it on the picture here, our groundbreaking ceremony end of 2025. You can all imagine that in the deepest winter you cannot build so much. We have used the time now to go into the architectural detail planning of the roads and foundation and also of the road that will be bringing trucks towards the plant, because there's still a part of road missing there. We are in the call for tenders, and sadly, you all know the geopolitical situation worldwide. Prices are going drastically up, that we have also seen now in the call for tenders and the offers we have received from every area. The point is here simply and shortly that things are getting more expensive.
We have worked now some years to get the financing, and it's not so good if the reserves you have, so the contingency, are eaten already at the beginning. That has pushed us to a decision beginning of this year to review the steel and tubing engineering to counter cost explosion. With specs, we have hired external companies to review our steel structure, our tubing. The good thing is they quickly told us that it's possible to reduce costs up to 20%. That's not meaning that the plant is now getting 20% cheaper, but that means that we stay in the area where we plan to build the plants.
This reduction of costs keeps the budgets in place, which for most people know that mainly public building projects never stay in the budget, but our goal is really to stay in the budget. We said we have to do that beforehand, because once everything is launched, you cannot reduce price anymore. We reduce cost, but on the other hand, maybe we lose now three to four months, but that was something that was planned since years already to redesign the building. What we have done in the past is we did build in front of our own door. That took long time, a lot of cranes, a lot of people on site, and the building took a long time. We hired now external specialist steel building company to redesign the steel structure to make it more modular.
Meaning that the idea behind that is to reduce the building time of the plant by half. Even though we are losing now three to four months for redesigning that and reducing costs, we will catch up that time in the building time, which will be strongly reduced afterwards. The investment volume is still EUR 62 million. Thanks to the cost reduction we are working on, the building site has not changed and the revenues neither. That's where we are with GreenFactory II. From my perspective, I hope that now in May we have the final planning, and that we can finalize then the bank contracts and start the final orders, which are missing. About the projects that are running. We have the map most of you know already. We have more than 20 plants in pipeline.
10 have started. two joint ventures now in six countries. Four plants in the permitting process. Three permits have been granted. We have to say that all these three permits have been granted in 2025. As we are here in a call about our numbers of 2025, that is really very, very important number to remember, that the Perl-Besch project, the reTIRE project in Czech Republic, and the Thermo-Lysi in Greece, all these three have received their building permits, all of them end of the year. All of them end of 2025. Now, they're all in the call of tenders, preparation, site preparation, et cetera, et cetera. Sadly, when you build so huge structures, so huge plants, things are not done in a week.
It is even the call for tenders is a process that takes some months. Here I have made a summary, or we have made a summary of where all the project or the major projects are standing. We are not speaking about all the 10 projects. We have taken out here the most advanced ones and the most promising early-stage projects and even some new projects which you never heard about and which we still cannot give you the names. The SUAS project engineering is accomplished. FID is taken. We are in the final phase with the bank closing. Here's really missing things like board decisions or supervisory board decisions that have to been taken. We have to sign them and send them to the bank. That has been done right now. We are in the call for tenders.
Most of them have already been done and negotiated. The contracting phase is right there now. The first groundworks has started. We even have a camera on which we see the building site live if we at Pyrum want to see where we're standing at. The Thermo Lysi project in Greece, they have secured the financing with the also with the grant they have received from the EIF. They have now hired a local coordinator for the project, which was a very good idea of Thermo Lysi to have somebody on site who is coordinating on a daily basis all the different suppliers and engineering offices that are working in the plant because we are not doing everything, of course. We are doing the pyrolysis part, and we are helping with the shredder and the mill and pelletizer.
There's still local work to do, like groundwork, roads, buildings, et cetera. There are a lot of entities to handle there. We have then very big news from this year, finally created the joint venture called UniPyrum together with UNITANK, founded to build up to 10 plants. Imagine that with a big partner like UNITANK, who has the financial strength, and us, who have the technical knowledge, together we will build now 10 plants in Europe, and Pyrum has a 49% share in that. The company has created the engineering contract for our first plant, and Emleben has been signed and started. The teams are working on the engineering there already with very high speed.
We even had already our first steering committee in April, in which some of the major decisions have already been made on how will the plant look like and where we place what and so on, so that we can now enter soon in the definition phase. VTTI, the biggest LNG operator on Earth, is one of our customers. There we have finished beginning of this year, phase I, which is the PRE-FEED accomplished, which gives you all the documents to make the permitting. The permitting request phase has now started there, the next phase will be the FEED phase, and that should start soon. That is now subject to VTTI approval.
We have given our offer for that, we are expecting in fact the order from VTTI as soon as they have the internal approval for the budget. On the early stage project with REMONDIS, that was a bit slowed down, not due to us or they had some restructurations internally and which branch of REMONDIS will do the thing or build the plant together with us. I think they found a very good solution that was presented to us not so long time ago. Now the engineering restarts here with new ideas, I think it's a very good path forward they have presented now.
Some good things take a little bit longer, but once decisions are made, with partners like REMONDIS, who have the budget and the sites and the team behind, then things go much quicker. The GreenTech project in Sweden has applied for a major grant also. If that grant decision is positive in Q2 2026, they plan to get already FID in 2026, which we were not expecting. If it happens, it's very good. We have two new things.
We have a new tire manufacturer, a big one with whom we are negotiating, and hopefully we can soon announce the signing of a tire recycling contract and a new big recovered carbon black offtake agreement. More about that in the next weeks. We have an MOU now with one major European recycler, with a project planned to start in 2027 with the engineering. The pipeline is filling up already for the next steps. Let's pass hand over to Kai for the finances.
Yes. Hello, everybody. A warm welcome also from my side. We today published our annual and consolidated financial statements for 2025. For the first time, we also included our first sustainability report into the annual report. Coming to the figures, we had revenues at EUR 4.1 million. That is more doubling than compared with the previous period. This was mainly driven by consulting and engineering service, but also by revenues from expanded plant operations. However, the original communicated revenue forecast was EUR 4.5 t o 6 million. That was not fully achieved. This was primarily due to the lack of revenues from ThermoTireBlack, as explained by Pascal, especially in the fourth quarter of 2025, we had expected that it will already be at a good level.
These delays came to the lack in the revenues. The group generated in total output of EUR 11.1 million of the projected range of EUR 10 to 1 5 million, despite a decline in own work capitalized due to the largely completed commissioning and construction work for the expansion of the plant in Dillingen the previous year. It was at EUR 11.7 million was maintained thanks to the increase in revenue. In total, own work capitalized was at EUR 6.8 million after EUR 9 million in the previous year.
The consolidated EBIT, earnings before interest and tax, were at EUR 8.7 million, slightly better than in 2024, and on the upper level within the forecast range of EUR -8.5 to - 10.5 million. The consolidated net results for the year amounted to EUR -10 million, after EUR -10.1 million in the previous year. This continues to reflect the startup and ramp-up phase of the expanded plant operations, as well as ongoing expenses for capacity expansion and our project development. For the outlook, we expect consolidated revenues in the range of EUR 6.5 to 9.5 million for 2026.
Total consolidated output in the range of EUR 12 to 18 million. The EBIT is expected to be between EUR -8 million and EUR -10.5 million. We anticipate that the successful ramp-up of the TTB processing, the further increase in capacity utilization of existing facilities and progress, especially in the project pipeline, will create the continuous for sustainable improvement in earnings in the coming years. Due to the delay that we mentioned already in the TTB production and in some of our plant contraction projects, unfortunately, the expected return to a balanced EBITDA is shifting from 2026 to 2027. Nevertheless, we are very positive, backed by the given solution for the pelletizer. Now we are focusing on increasing our production by extending production times of our TTB.
The modification of the transport system of the milling and pelletizing in Q3. We expect successful signing of plant purchase agreement, as example, with SUAS reTIRE. Regarding capital, in 2025, we performed two capital increases to have strengthened our financial position. The available liquidity at end of 2025 was EUR 17 million after around EUR 12 million to the end of the previous year. The equity ratio went up to 41.6% after 34%. We had two capital increases, one in July of 200,000 new shares. We proceeded EUR 5.6 million to institutionals at a price of EUR 28. Afterwards, to the end of the year, we decided to do a capital increase with subscription rights. In our point of view, it was very successful.
The proceeds were EUR 13 million and the issuing price at EUR 27.5. Current shareholder structure, Pascal Klein and Amel Holding SA, so the family of Pascal Klein are still the biggest shareholders at 7.2%, respectively 7.4%. Benifin, one of our business angels, from the beginning, still at 6.2%, and Jürgen Opitz at 6.4%. They participated in both of the capital increases and showed their support. BASF Antwerpen is actually at 6%. Schwalbe Holding also supported us quite good and hold now 5.6%, Continental around 0.8%. We have a free float of 60.4%, backed by more than 6,000 shareholders, actually. We come to the highlights and outlook, and I hand back to Pascal.
I will close the presentation. What are the next steps? Now finish the financing for mainly the Czech project and the Greek project and the project in Perl-Besch. In fact, Perl-Besch is just waiting for the final tenders, which we expect to get hopefully now in May, June. Once we have the final tenders, we can give them to the authorities for the grant from Saarland, and then we have everything to give to the bank, and then the financing in Perl-Besch should be done. Czech project is a big further advance on the bank side, we are still speaking with investors. It is never bad to speak with investors and to have new solutions in mind and backup plans in case we need them.
Increased TTB production, that is one of the core points now to increase our revenues. As said, we have now the green light from the internal auditing, if everything goes well, we have now also the green light end of this month here from Conti, from the automotive auditing. We will finally be able to sell huge volumes. We will do, as said, a smaller modification work on the mill and palletizer to increase some volumes during our, mainly, our annual stop. Perl-Besch plant and, as said, the SUAS plant is very important for us to start there quickly and with full speed, but everything is prepared there.
We will also have to pass a lot of time in the next months in Brussels or in Berlin to get all these new laws and regulation really in place so that we are on track. We were also pushing them a little bit forward so that they come earlier. For example, the ELVR should be in place already since 2025, sometimes you need to push things a little bit also on the political side. This slide is more or less just a summary of the biggest highlights of 2025, for those who didn't listen. I would like to say that's the summary page. As said, we got the funding in Greece, groundbreaking ceremony in Perl-Besch.
We are really transiting right now from a startup that was just testing things to a roll-out that is worldwide. We have secured all offtake agreements. That is something that you really shouldn't underestimate. The ISCC EU certification, which opens the oil to the fuel market and even to the green fuel market. Everybody knows the Strait of Hormuz. Everybody is speaking about it everywhere. Imagine we can produce green, even green oil out of waste. Of course, we cannot deliver all the oil needed in Europe, but it can be a substitution which can have some percentage. Thank you for the attention, and I think now we will start with answering questions.
Yes. Thank you very much. To all the participants, please place your questions in our Q&A chat box because today we are not answering questions via the audio line, and I am waiting for some more questions. We already have some. Mr. Rainer Meckel is asking, the funding in Greece was after all subject to certain time limits. Will those deadlines be met?
As of now, yes. We are on track here in the planning. We had the Greek customers together with their engineering office have been here just two weeks ago. A big meeting with all of our engineers in which we worked again on the timeline and the deadlines for the documents. From I was in that meeting, and from what I can tell, it looks all good.
Okay. Thank you. We move on with a follow-up from Mr. Meckel, can you give us some idea about how the proceeds from the capital increase will be used?
Yes. It's the same as we announced during the capital increases. We used already some of this money for the project in Czech. For bringing in EUR 8.6 million equity, we needed some money, and not all of that was refinanced. We used some of this money for a new reactor on TAD 1. There is already a project that has been started, but there are huge modifications that needs to be done, it's not that quick that we can just, let's say, plug and play.
For all who have been here, I think they understand if they remember how the tower looks like. It's not that sorted than the new ones. Of course, we need to use some of the money for the cash burn rate, which should slow down shortly when the mill and pelletizing is in full production. Yeah, for the rest is, let's say, also for preparation works for the next projects and the ongoing projects.
Thank you very much. Before we get to other participants, Rainer Meckel just had a follow-up, do you plan another capital increase in the next 12 months? Excuse me.
Actually, there are no plans for another capital increase. It's, let's say, it depends on the speed of the projects. As we have shown, let's say, we want to build up to 10 plants, as example, with UNITANK, and of course, these plants would need to be financed. We don't expect that it's that quick. We don't expect another capital increase for now.
Okay. Thank you very much. We get to another participant. Mr. Holger Steffen ask, what is the current status of the replacement of reactor 1?
Yes.
Our engineering team is working on that. In fact, there's two solutions. Solution one is we take the reactors as we have them now, so the same reactor as in line 2& 3. These have also been ordered for Perl-Besch. That would be the easiest way if we were able to fit that one in the tower number one. For that, our team is working right now on how to modify the tower internally to fit the new reactor, which is bigger, in the old tower.
The result is hopefully we have that soon, and if that works to fit the new reactor in a much smaller tower, then it can be very quick to change it. Otherwise, we need to redesign the reactor a little bit. In the middle of the process with our engineering team, which they have weekly brainstormings about it. The main issue now is to find how can we change the interior of the tower quickly to not change the reactor.
Okay, thank you very much. A follow-up from Mr. Steffen. Why was an unscheduled write-down of EUR 250,000 recorded on the grinding and pelletizing plant of the first production line?
Yes. We already did write-downs, let's say, in the past on that one. We had a recalculation together with our auditor during the preparation works for the annual report. We made a new calculation based on the experience that we had on especially repair and maintenance. The finding was that it was higher than the need is higher than expected also in the future. The consumables within that machine are higher. The unit economics are worse, so we decided that we write down another EUR 250,000 on that part.
If I may add here, the new mill is different. One of the main reasons why we changed from an impact mill to a jet mill is the fact that it is consuming a lot of, it's producing a lot of OpEx costs.
Okay. Thank you very much. There was one question considering the costs of the replacement of a reactor.
It's about EUR 2 million.
That was pretty clear, and we move on to the next participants. What is the current status of the development of the industrial facility for recycling CFRP? It is a question from Matthias Haberling.
We are CFRP, we have the prototype, which we still use constantly to get new knowledge about it. We have applied for a grant to develop a bigger line. Honestly speaking, the CFRP, we are lacking a little bit of stuff on that side. We have so many projects running, I've seen another question asking if we have enough staff.
What was the question? Is Pyrum's engineering consulting capacity sufficient for all the projects currently in implementing phase? Yes. Why? We have switched also some guys from R&D to our project development department, because the projects are taking so much time and so much energy from the engineering that we have. Also, for cost reasons, we cannot hire endlessly people. To fulfill the projects is more, for the moment, a bit more important than the development of new input streams. That will switch again in the future, but that is needed right now.
The planning in the, in our internal business plan is always linked to the number of projects in parallel, because the idea, of course, is that from phase to phase, documents can be handed over and can be modified to the explicit needs of a dedicated plant site. In the future, there should be some possibilities to strengthen that parts.
Thank you very much. We move on to another participant. Mr. Linton Harfield asked, is it your view that grant funding is likely required or incentives of some kind for the system to financially feasible?
I hope I understand the question properly, but Kai, if you want.
I also don't completely understand.
I-
For me, it sounds as if the question is if the business plan would fit the needs without grant funding. If it's in, if it's that, yes, but it would make financing much easier and the commercials better. What we see is that the playground in the European countries around us is much better supported than in Germany. We cannot apply for the EIF fund as a example in Germany because you can just apply once in a country.
If when you come to a country with a new technology, that's why our Greek partners has decided that they want to double the initial throughput that was intended. In Czech, we see that there is some tax benefits in Germany today. We, yeah, only can apply for creating workspaces, and it's if you're in a ramp up coming from a startup and still make losses, it's quite positive. If you see that on the European level, there are some measures. Of course, we ask for them.
Maybe to sum up, the project is the finances work also without grants, but of course you have much higher IRRs if you have a grant on the plant.
Yes, thank you very much. Considering the financing, have you been considering crowdfunding at last as a marketing instrument? Is a question from Johan Gebhardt.
Yes. We have considered that in the past, but we have decided that it makes no sense. What we've figured out was that it is not possible, let's say, above EUR 5 million. Let's say the stage in that Pyrum is already, in our opinion, it is not the right instrument to ask for crowdfunding.
I have never asked myself honestly the question if it is a marketing instrument, crowdfunding. Because, yeah, I don't know. Let's think about that, but I've never seen it as a potential marketing instrument.
Thank you very much. Some ideas coming up on that stage. We move on to the next participant. Can now the second tranche of the EIF be drawn? Have respective conditions been met? Is a follow-up question from Mr. Hinkel.
For now, we have taken EUR 19.3 million from the first tranche, and EUR 5.7 million is agreed for the project that we actually have. We will discuss. There is not an automatism because it's always that you're talking also about securitization of the funding. In theory, we see it that it is possible. Some of that, let's say, second tranche was reserved also for the REMONDIS project. As this one should move on now, again, we are in discussions with BASF. Let's say there has also been some internal things within BASF that are public, but we are in discussions.
Okay. Thank you very much. A question from Mr. Alexander Bucherpfennig. Is there significant progress on Pyrum's research and developments regarding the recycling of carbon fiber and or other plastics?
I would say the carbon fiber question, we answered it already. The other plastics, we are getting on weekly basis new requests for other plastics. We have a lab. Our lab is also working on that. You have to know that we have just one lab. In that lab, we have five people working, and the lab is also doing the quality control. With now increasing RCB deliveries, now with the green light, our internal green light for the serial production and the daily oil analysis for the BASF deliveries, we are juggling a little bit on how much time can we invest in new input streams. The most important for Pyrum, and that should be in the mind of everybody here, is now to make profits.
Profits, we can only make them by selling what we have. We are quite advanced with new projects, and I think we can pull them quite quickly out of the box. It's not the right moment for that, I would say. My grandpa always told me, better make five things right than 10 things wrong. That is the risk that we are entering here if we do too many things at the same time.
Thank you very much. A question from Mr. Simon or Simon Agass. Is the mill and pelletizer unit MAD capable to process the additional outputs of the new TAD 1 reactor?
I would say it's a bit too early to say. Let's wait for the final modification by the supplier of the mill and pelletizer for the transportation system. The design, let's say, for TAD 1 is not completed yet. I think it's too early to say. As a backup, there is still MAD 1 for TAD 1.
Thank you. Personnel turnover looks rather high at 20% in 2025. Is that a one-off thing, and are you able to get the personnel you need?
First of all, we get and got all the personnel we need. You need to understand that we do shift work 24/7, and the biggest fluctuation is, let's say, in the plant itself, from the [400 workers]. It looks high, and we decided that we publish it, even though we would have had the right not to show. But we want to have a good basis for comparison in the in the in the running year. It is as it is, but, yeah, in the shift work, I think is the, is the most.
From our core staff, let's say, so the engineers, the programmers, the project leaders, there's almost no fluctuation. That is nearing zero, I would say. It's really, you know, working in a plant where you recycle tires and it is sometimes a bit dirty, also sorting tires, there are people who start that because they have no solution or because they just lost their job. There are many people losing their jobs in our region. Yeah, sometimes you need to take somebody for a job, and you have to place that three or four times than any of somebody who stays. Those who are aware what the job means here outside the plant, they stay.
Well, thank you. A question from Mr. Merker, Philip Merker, how long will the final conversion of the milling and pelletizing plant take now? And will production be halted during this period?
Our goal is to do that in the annual maintenance, really to avoid as many product losses as possible. The range goes from three to six weeks. Of course, we will do our best. We have proposed now to go on 24/7, only also night shifts for the modification, and that we will help Hosokawa with the modifications. I can tell you, we reduced the time to do that already almost by half in the last two weeks, just by reducing ordering times drastically. Believe us, we are doing everything we can. As said, today, it's not even needed.
What we can produce now is good for the orders we have, and if it's [inaudible], or if it's Continental, or if it's the two new ones we have, they ramp up quickly. They don't go from 0% to 100% in one week. They go up from 0% to 100% of what they need in two, three, four months. That will now slowly go up. We also have the time to take care of is that we cannot go from 0% to 100% in two weeks, that will never work. Therefore, we have coordinated that with our annual maintenance stop.
Thank you very much. We now move on, considering the time, to the last question of today's earnings call. Mr. Alexander Lindner asked in German, but I will translate it. when will you think of getting the break even?
We expect break even now in 2028.
That was pretty precise and short-handed. We now come to the end because there are no questions left in the Q&A chat box, and we come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you very much to all the participants for their shown interest in Pyrum Innovations, and thank you very much to you both answering all the questions and taking the time for the presentation. If there are any further questions in the near future, please feel free to contact investor relations. For some final remarks, I hand over to Mr. Klein, and wish you all a lovely weekend. Thank you, and bye-bye.
There is not a lot to add. I wish you also a lovely weekend. Hopefully, nice weather, which is expected at least for here in Saarland. Thank you all for your attention, and I wish you all the best.