To this half-year presentation of SoftOx Solutions 2022. The presentation will go in English since we are streaming it for our international investors. I hope that's okay. Today, first of all, I would like to introduce our new CMO, Dr. Christopher Burton. He will later on go through the technology development and give you an introduction on where we are and what we see. Kristine , our CFO, will give you the financial update, and I will give you the highlights, a brief introduction to our technology. It will not be that deep as it usually is in an investor presentation, but since it is a quarter presentation, a little bit. The commercial and the military development. The last one, I think we shall also spend a little bit extra time on. Highlights.
First half year, we finished a phase I study in our inhalation solution. Chris will go through the results with you. I can only say that I'm very pleased both with the progress and with the results that we got. Phase I of our infection remover, SBE, is ongoing, and we hope to get the results quite soon. We presented our technology at the European Wound Management Association conference in May in Paris with actually three sessions on our technology, which we found was very encouraging to be recognized this way. Last but not least, the European Defence Fund granted us NOK 96 million for development of a military countermeasure towards CBRN. I will go further into details on this because this is a huge recognition of SoftOx's, which I'm going to spend some time on today.
We delivered the application for the registration of our wound irrigation solution in the U.S. After the EWMA, I will shortly mention that we have been reached out to by international players since they see that our technology on the wound care space is unique. The financial part, Kristine will go further into later. What do we actually got? Just a short introduction. We have a patented technology for treatment of infection on tissue. It is a composition of hypochlorous acid and organic acids together, which makes it possible to tweak different products to different indications. In our platform technology, we are developing some key products which we later on can use for expanding the portfolio to a large amount of different products on different indications. Our mission, helping the world fighting infections. That's a very broad and bold statement.
When we look at that, we're looking at three classes specifically. We are looking at viruses, biofilm resistance, and antimicrobial resistance. Viruses, everybody has seen what a small virus like COVID can do with the world if it's spread out. The world was locked down for more than two years. At the same time, we have also sadly seen that war have come back to Europe, and the risk of chemical and biological warfare is suddenly on the front page again. Therefore, EU have also said that they want to develop a solution for medical countermeasure towards that threat. Biofilm resistance. Mostly present in chronic infection, chronic wounds. Approximately 1%-2% of the population get a chronic wound. 40 million every year got a chronic wound. The cost of treatment of chronic wound is huge. Some say up to 5% of the healthcare costs.
We are working on the solution that shall remove the infections. Shall not solve the problem with chronic wound because that would be unserious to claim, but only removing the infection is a huge deed to take on. Antimicrobial resistance or antibiotic resistance, which we are normally using in the common language, the biggest threat toward modern healthcare. Some people say we are post-antibiotic period. Some say that the antibiotic resistance is the next pandemic that will hit us. Will change our life if we don't manage to solve it. Our ambition is to participate in solving all these three problems, and that is bold. How shall we do that? How do we even think about being able to do something like that? First thing we realized was that we could never build a company in Norway taking on all these challenges alone.
We had to have a network, a network of highly competent scientists, clinicians, and customers that wanted to take our product to the market because they saw that our solution is the best way forward. We have talked about EWMA, we have talked about Excite International, we have talked about MTEC and US Navy, we have talked about University of Copenhagen, we have talked about the Rigshospitalet or Bispebjerg Hospital in Copenhagen. The new one this time is European Defence Fund. It's not European Defence Fund itself alone, but it's a network of partners which will work with us to bring forward the product that may be the world's largest customer want, and they are willing to pay for getting it, the European Union. Pipeline. We have updated a little bit where we are. Biocide, regulatory pending.
I'm not going to spend much time on it today, simply because I don't have much new to say. They have got all the papers. We have answered all the questions. We are waiting for their answer, and we can't say when it comes. Medical device, wounds. Wound irrigation solution, I've already mentioned that we have filed the first application for approval in the U.S. Later on, we are going to file for Europe as well. Drug, phase I inhalation treatment. Inhalation solution, finished with phase I, started to work on the application for phase II. Business segments. Today, we talk about wounds and respiratory. Disinfectant, I've already said, we don't have much to say. Chris, stage is yours.
Thank you, and good morning, everybody. The SoftOx technology platform has a number of competitive advantages, and the first and foremost being that it is a pan-spectrum antimicrobial. That means it's a pan-virucidal agent and a pan-bactericidal agent. The cidal part is also interesting in the sense that it's killing and inactivating microorganisms. It's not just inducing a stasis like some antibiotics. In addition to that, it has not been shown to induce antimicrobial resistance. It has a good safety and tolerability profile, as we will see from the phase I results, and there is no systemic uptake, so we do not expect any systemic side effects. SoftOx has already applied this to two main therapy areas, the respiratory disease indications and also the wound care indication. It is a versatile technology platform which we are already exploiting.
Before I give you a helicopter view of where we are, I would like to zoom in to the very detail. This is a microbe, and it's shown at atomic level. Each one of these multicolored dots you see that makes up this microbe, which happens to be SARS-CoV-2, is an atom. That just gives you some idea now of the relative size of the microorganisms that we're trying to treat. A bacterium would be 10x to 100x times larger than this. We have basically three classes of antiviral, and I'm not going to put them into sort of a treatment class, but more of a size class. We have the large molecules. These are sort of the monoclonal antibodies, and they would be this sort of size.
They function by recognizing a specific moiety on the surface, binding to that, inactivating it, so that this, for example, in SARS-CoV-2, can't enter a cell. It binds onto the spike proteins that you can see protruding from the virus, or it nets them in so that they're easily more taken up by phagocytosis. We also have small molecules here on the left, this is typically a substrate for a protein or an enzyme, which is very similar to the enzyme that the microbe uses, but then a reaction takes place, and it blocks that enzyme process. We have then also our technology, which has been on this slide all along and is now circled here for relative size.
We're talking basically about a nanotechnology, and this agent reacts with through oxygenation and chlorination, not just surface structures, but also within the microbe itself. To go into a little bit more detail, we have direct and indirect mechanisms of antimicrobial mechanism of action, which is independent, very importantly, of biological processes and unreliant on metabolic targets, which means that it's less likely to induce antimicrobial resistance. Of course, we have several targets here illustrated. We have basically the surface targets disrupting and modifying these surface glycoproteins, which would inhibit replication and viral budding and cell entry. We have at the next level, the cell wall being able to form pores and disrupt the integrity of the cell.
We have right in the core, damage to the nucleic acid material of the microbe, such that missense or nonsense proteins are produced, and that doesn't help the virus or bacterium to replicate. We can also interrupt metabolic processes within the cell. In addition to that, the indirect effects of this chlorination oxidation is these byproducts are taken up by dendritic cells, and this actually facilitates a presentation of these microbes to the specific immune response driven through MHC class II. The reason why we know all this is because hypochlorous acid is an endogenously produced antimicrobial agent produced by our own neutrophils, and hence, it's been studied quite extensively.
The big issue, of course, has not been able to stabilize this molecule to actually deliver it to target tissues, which we now believe we have solved. I mentioned we applied this to two specific areas, and first, I'm gonna go a little bit into the respiratory area. With the advent of COVID, we initially focused on very much the COVID, and this has now broadened to sort of the influenza-like illness space in general. Before COVID, it sort of went global. 12% of EU/U.S. population annually experienced flu-like symptoms. For the vast majority of people, it's not a big issue. We stay in bed, we stay away from work, or we take some over-the-counter medication.
Actually, a significant proportion of people, perhaps those with underlying comorbid conditions, also seek medical attention. In fact, 20% to 50% of patients. Of these, some are just told to go home, there's nothing else we can do. For a small proportion, they are then tested, and they have maybe a laboratory confirmation of the diagnosis. For these tiny few, the tiny lucky few that get a lab confirmation of a diagnosis, they are then amenable to current antiviral therapy. For the rest, it's down to over-the-counter products which focus on reducing symptoms, and they do nothing to cure the disease, shorten the duration of the disease, alter the course of the disease, and very importantly, nothing to reduce disease transmission to others.
If we look at the data, also, how much of disease is actually caused by influenza, we're well aware there are now, not only in anti-influenza drugs, but also anti, SARS-CoV-2 drugs available to us, and there are also, respiratory syncytial virus, drugs in, development for children specifically. We can see actually that influenza, makes up a small proportion, actually the minority of cases of influenza-like illness. The vast majority is driven by a number of other viruses. Some of that I mentioned, but also parainfluenza, other human coronaviruses, rhinovirus, enterovirus, et cetera.
The figure on the right here is the most up-to-date data that we have available from Denmark, from Statens Serum Institut, which is in a post-SARS-CoV-2 era, where we see 25% of all influenza-like illness was driven by influenza A or B, and 20% was driven by SARS-CoV-2. We do a lot of talking about influenza-like illness, and oh, you must test that, but actually, we're still diagnosing a minority of viral etiological agents. A bit in that context, now look at the actual some data. We've mentioned that we have a virucidal and bactericidal platform, and here we have some data. On the panel on the left, we took a panel of mammalian cells.
We infected all those cells with an intracellular virus, just like SARS-CoV-2, and then treated and incubated that with SIS. SIS was able to penetrate the cell and inactivate and kill the virus such that 50% of cells had no detectable virus remaining. All these cells were still viable. Some of you, 50% I think is a good result, but if it's not good enough, the sensitivity of this test is that if one virus remains, the cell will test positive. As you know, there can be many thousands, hundreds of thousands of viral replicants within a cell. Still, I think an excellent result. The panel on the right shows the bactericidal effect both in the gram-negative and gram-positive species.
Basically, we see an 8 log10 reduction in colony-forming units. What does that mean? Basically means that if you had 100 million bacteria, you reduce it to one. In the in vitro studies, you cannot get a better result than that. Extremely potent antibacterial effects. We've taken that and then looked in a healthy population of healthy volunteers in a randomized placebo control first in human trial, where we look at ascending doses, single ascending and multiple ascending doses of various strengths of SIS, in a sequential manner, where we looked at nature and occurrence of adverse events, change from baseline in spirometry, also oxygen saturation and various other safety parameters.
We also had a specific test. We solicited for local tolerability as well, like burning sensation, sneezing, cough, et cetera. We reported on these results in Q2. The top line is that there were no serious adverse events. Any adverse events were mild and self-limiting. There was acceptable local tolerability profile, and there was no observable effect on spirometry. Other lab parameters were also unaffected. This happened at all dose levels and regardless of the dosing frequency. The conclusion of this study was that SIS at concentrations of up to 100 parts per million or 100 micrograms per milliliter, administered 4 times a day for up to five days, through a nebulizer, was safe and well-tolerated in this population of healthy volunteers.
As Geir Almås said, we're now taking this, and we're now in a dialogue with the European Medicines Agency regarding our phase II design and subsequent clinical trial application. Now a focus on also the wound care side. We have a hypothesis at SoftOx that most chronic wounds are in fact infected. It's not just a hypothesis, it's actually proven. Most chronic wounds are in fact infected. Here we see data actually on venous leg ulcers, where between 40%-70% of venous leg ulcers are already colonized by up to five or six bacterial species at the time of presentation. What's very interesting about these, this sort of mixture of bacteria is they're actually not just a mix, they're actually extremely well organized into structures called biofilms.
Biofilms present a real problem for current antibiotic therapy. You see on the panel on the right here, in the top we have a green panel, and this is staining for Gram-positive bacteria, like, Staphylococcus aureus and, like for example, then the MRSA, that's a type of Staphylococcus aureus. The little arrows there you see in white is the wound surface. What you see is that the Staphylococcus aureus is actually all present at the very surface of the wound, within 30 micrometers. In contrast, another bacterial species also present in this wound, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Gram-negative, is actually all shown in red here, is actually all greater than 30 micrometers deep. They have organized into layers basically.
This presents a real problem, topical antibiotics reaching the deep wound infections, and systemic antibiotics reaching the very surface, and you can see that there's an inherent problem there. We are developing, of course, an agent that would treat and address both these types of bacterial colonization. This is the data also from biofilm, which is very important. Essentially what we see that already after one minute of treatment, and certainly after 15 minutes of treatment, at whatever dose, we see also this very strong bactericidal effect, up to 8 log10 reduction. And also for the Gram-positives, after 15 minutes incubation at the medium and higher doses that we have taken on into phase I.
A similar wound care formulation that we have already published from the SWIS-02 also demonstrated that our hypothesis, well, it supports our hypothesis, I should say. That is on day four, if we looked at wound healing, we actually had 33% better wound healing compared to the sterile saline control. On day 10, which was the primary endpoint, there was no difference between the two agents, and that is because both wounds were healed. The day four data suggests that the rate of wound healing was much quicker in the SWIS, in the SoftOx treated group.
On day four also, we noticed a correlation in the reduced bacterial load that we were able to culture, both pre-irrigation and post-irrigation, with lower loads being seen in the SoftOx treated group. Putting two and two together, we're removing or reducing the amount of infection, and that makes sense in my scientifically to me at least, that you're reducing ongoing risk of damage to an already damaged wound. By removing that inflammation, you allow the wound to heal more effectively. This is now, of course, Geir Almås has already mentioned this, but SBE, the Biofilm Eradicator product is currently in phase Ia, and actually now in Ib. We're in the multiple ascending dose phase, and this is soon to complete.
Basically then the clinical rationale for this drug would be that you would be a first-line treatment for locally infected wounds. They shouldn't have any systemic evidence of infection. Thereby, not only is it a first-line, but there will be a clinical rationale for early intervention as well. That summarizes where we are on the clinical development, specifically with regard to respiratory and wound care, and I'll just hand back to Geir Almås.
Thank you. Thank you, Christopher. Commercial and military development. First, the wound care, which the technology that Chris have just went through with you now. Every year, 180 million wounds are treated in hospital. We know approximately 10% of them get an infection in the hospital-acquired infections. For them, we believe it will be vital interest to avoid infection by using a preventive solution and increase the likelihood of fast closure, because when the wound is closed, you don't get infected. Therefore, our wound irrigation solution goes towards a large market for acute preventive treatment of wounds. You have the chronic wounds, 40 million wounds every year. Brown University have estimated for SoftOx that early intervention treatment which Christopher described will reduce the cost of hospital treatment of the infection with approximately $640.
With only this, only on venous leg ulcers, that type of wounds. It is 2.3 million of those in the US every year treated. That means that the estimated cost-saving potential for US hospitals by using our technology will be $1.5 billion. Those two products and those two product profiles and the philosophy behind the technology were very carefully presented at the European Wound Management Association conference. The response to that was actually that the industry reached out for us and are talking with us. We can't say more because it's an early stage. From my perspective, it's a little bit too early.
I would very much like to have a little bit more clinical data before we start to talk, but I also know that Phase I is soon finished, and it start to be time to start to think about it. Therefore, we are talking with them, and we will of course, and that is of course according with our strategy. SoftOx strategy is very clear. We shall develop products. We shall not sell products. Therefore, to talk to them is according with our strategy. It's early stage talk, but I'm very positive that we will go forward soon. European Defence Fund military inhalation solution. When we made the stock exchange note in July, I think, "Okay, how much shall we tell?" I would love to sit and write a five-page stock exchange note, but I don't think anybody will read it.
We took the most important information which was needed to get out there and informed them about it. European Union has established a European Defence Fund, EUR 8 billion fund spending over five years to solve the most critical risks for European citizens with the most advanced technologies in Europe. That is what they say that they want. To the medical countermeasure program, they choose the consortium led by the Agency of Renewable Energy in France. Look at the nuclear and look at France, and you understand why they were choosing to lead the consortium. That consortium is 20 research and development and industrial partners in EU. It's 10 governments, and it's three technologies, where SoftOx is covering chemical and biological warfare. That is, for me, a huge recognition of the SoftOx technology.
Actually, the world's largest customer don't only want to buy our product, but they are willing to pay for developing it first because they believe that our product can solve a huge risk for them. That is a great recognition from my point of view. As I said, the main objective for European Defence Fund, identifying technology critical for EU security. SoftOx is critical to EU security, is what they say when they grant us among our partners. Foster transborder cooperation. They want to build a cluster, a network of companies in Europe towards CBRN, chemical, biological, nuclear, and radioactive warfare. The defense package and the program itself is not that they throw EUR 97 million on us and see what you can manage to make out of it. No.
It's an early stage establishing the network, clearly defined packages that we shall go through, and they will follow up. They have already budget in EU to follow up the program and take it all the way from research and development to buying the finished product. If we manage to succeed with developing it, the clear intention for EU is to do like they do with vaccines or warplanes or whatever. First, they pay for the development, and then they buy the product. Then you have EU action plan for synergies, which EDF is a part of. They want synergies between the civil and defense. They want the civil society to participate in developing the defense sector, but they also want the defense sector to participate in develop technologies for the civil society.
That means that we can very likely have a close interaction between our civil SWIS irrigation solution development and the military countermeasure development. It will not be the same product, but they will be close to each other. SoftOx will be owner of the technology. The military solution, we will have to have approval for export from the Norwegian Ministry of Defence for the military solution, but the civil solution will be on the market like any civil product. The patents that SoftOx have already made or filed, the technology is ours. So-called background patent is ours. If it comes foreground patents during the development process, we will own them together with those who make the discovery on our technology. We will have to license it in from partners with 50%, but we will be the one that shall financially exploit that.
This is a huge contract for SoftOx. The market for the solution is just as big. From our calculation, we expect this market to be just as big as the civil market. It will be a solution that you have to store. When they expire on the shelf life, they have to repurchase it. Our estimated turnover rate and storage rate tells us that it will give us a turnover of approximately what we estimate the civil market to be. That means that we have doubled the size of SIS. We have reduced the risk by getting a partner that has expressed willingness to pay up to 90% of the development cost. We got a partner that are willing to secure that they shall pay 50% of expected turnover from year one when the product is ready.
For SoftOx then, the challenge is to explore and use the network which we have become part of. There are institutes in this network like Robert Koch Institute, for example, which is highly recognized institute. University of Copenhagen, highly recognized university. Others. I can't mention everybody. It's dangerous to mention somebody but not everybody. Okay, I took the chance. We must use this network in developing of our technology. Because if we use this network, we get the best product, fastest to market. EU is happy of seeing that we are developing the cluster of technologies that EU wants to be established. We are one of the cornerstones in their wish to establish this network. This is a great news for SoftOx. Financial update, Kristine , the stage is yours.
Thank you. The financial results for the quarter is in line with our expectations. As a clinical stage biotech company, we invest heavily in our assets and pipeline, which we expect will generate promising returns down the road. We have a stable level of activity, which means that we also have a steady level of costs quarter to quarter, as you can see from the picture behind me. Alongside good cost control, we are also building up and professionalizing the company for the future. Most of our costs lies in the R&D and clinical development work, and a relatively conservative amount is set aside for administration. We have achieved several milestones, as you heard described before today, with a relatively small budget.
We have experienced positive interest in our disinfection products, but have not been able to market them properly since we are still waiting for the final regulatory approval. This is reflected in the low sales revenues. Sorry. Looking at the current liquidity situation, which is as expected, it's important to clarify that the loan established with our main shareholder in June is booked as a receivable, and it's not included in the liquidity overview as of June. As you all know, we regularly consider the need for and different types of solutions for financing. This includes the possibility of share issues and timing, which remains an option for the company. I, of course, can't go further into any details here because this is ultimately the board's responsibility. That was all from me. I give the word back to Geir.
Thank you, Kristine. Thank you. Summary. Three segments, respiratory, wound, and disinfectant. Wounds start to reach the point where it's not SoftOx anymore, I believe. Means somebody will take over and take it forward for us. The same with disinfectant, but don't rush out there and think that that will happen during two months. No. Things take time. That is how I see it develops. Under respiratory, we see that it's going to clearly becoming more and more focus for SoftOx going forward. Then hopefully later on, we will, when we have the capacity for it, bring up other products which we can do the same with. Expected news flow in 2022. Wound care, we expect to go out with more detailed information about the talks.
I can say we expect to conclude the talks, give more information about it. GMP production line will be established. We are very close to finishing. Achieving a 510(k) clearance in the U.S. market. Complete the phase I of SBE, which I look very much forward to it. Initiation of phase II means we expect to send application for approval of starting phase II at end of this year. Respiratory, initiation of phase II will be aligned with the EDF process. I think everybody understands that we don't want to run forward with the civil process before we have managed to do a quite complex work on aligning the two processes and find the optimal strategy for product development. That can save our shareholders from hundreds of millions of NOK. Financial and strategic partner, we have been working on that.
I think everybody understands why I said, "Less relaxed till we get the answer from the EDF." Now we got that answer, and now we have to align how we shall develop these two product together, and then we know the financial need, and we know what kind of partner we want. What I would like to say is that the partner we want is a little bit different today than it was a couple of months ago, when we take into consideration that the consortium gives us a lot of experience and facilities which a potential partner could have given us. Entering into contractual phase or prepare the Pan-European research activity. Simply said, make the contract. The consortium have to sign the contract with EU.
EU has said, "Your suggestion is so good that we want to give you a contract, but let's sit down and agree on what shall be in that contract. You have said what you want to do. We agree on what you shall do. Just make a contract on it and sign it." We expect that to happen before New Year. The payments from the EDF will come next year, start to come next year. When it is talking about the financial part, I think it's correct of me to say all the cost will be cost refunding. Means that we need financial resources to pay for the development first and then get it refunded from EU afterwards. Disinfection. Partner discussions goes on in EU and the rest of the world.
As long as we don't get any answer from the Swedish Chemicals Agency, it is very difficult for us to go into details in these discussions. Simply because until they have done their job, we don't manage to say if the product comes to market. We are sure that the product fulfill all the criteria that they are putting forward. We have answered on all their questions, but they have to approve it, and that I can't promise anything on, as long as I have experienced that they're asking the same questions not one time, not two times, but three, four times. They even try to change their mind on what is the right answer between the different times they ask the same question. Then you end up with a moving target. I'm positive.
I think we manage now, but I don't promise when. Key takeaway. We are talking about large global product portfolio here. This is huge potential. The team, I must admit that I'm very proud of the team that we have built up over the years, and this team is so good that the partners, both in the U.S. and Europe, wants to work with us. They want to meet our team. We're very pleased to announce that, Thomas Bjarnsholt have gone in as Chief Scientific Officer, together with Christopher going in as Chief Medical Officer. The two of them are strengthening our team considerably in the space where we are moving into now, respiratory tract. Endogenous ingredients. You know, we have taken what the body's used to have around.
We have just taken something that is already there, and we have made this unique product out of it. It's easy to understand that the body is pleased with that, instead of having all kinds of things that they have never seen before. Strong platform technology with 58 granted patents worldwide. We got a new patent this summer in the U.S. Patent actually on biofilm. Claim on removing biofilm. That was quite cool, I will say. I remember two years ago, one of the big players in the disinfectants market told me, "You can apply for patent on biofilm, but forget it. You will never get it. It's impossible." I got it. We got it. It is possible. You just have to have the proof that you are unique. Co-funded development.
Two of the world's largest customers, US Navy and European Defense Fund, EU, participating, developing the products that they shall buy from us afterwards. One on the wound care side, the other on the respiratory tract side. That is huge. That is really telling us that, yes, the market have confirmed the interest for our product. It's just that you must look at the right customer, and we're looking at the biggest ones. Collaboration. The close collaboration that we got with universities I think is unique, and it makes us scientifically very strong. Then last but not least, significant unmet needs. I don't think you find much higher score on significant unmet need than you do with our portfolio. That was my last word. Any questions?
Please, for those who are doing online, please send in the questions, and we will answer them as soon as possible. Yes. Nils Holten. Yes, please. Kristine Rød.
It's done. Who was one?
Hi, Nils Holten with SpareBank 1 Markets. You mentioned three technologies were chosen in this research program for European Defence Fund. Are these technologies kind of competing against each other?
Significantly-
or complementary? Could you also say a few words about how many applied for these funds?
First, the first thing, the technology as far as I can manage to consider them when I went through them is complementary. They are not competing with each other. To the second question, it was one consortium applying for this fund. It was other technologies that tried to come into the consortium from some of the leading European research institutes that were not accepted into the consortium. What was the competition was in being accepted by the consortium, not in, let's say, afterwards. Afterwards, it was the evaluation from EU that ended up with that they choose the consortium. They believe in the product. That was actually based on the work from Norway and France, where we actually convinced them that this was a platform, that it was possible to do something medical countermeasure on the CBRN side.
Because today, for those who have been in the armed forces, you know that you basically have nothing to defend yourself with with these kinds of weapons, except of the masks and physical blockage. Yes.
This is Espen from SpareBank 1 Markets. You mentioned you're in contractual negotiations with the EDF, and maybe you can give us a bit more details on the key issues being discussed and what kind of feedback that you received, and if there's any data that you need to provide in order to get that agreement signed. Also, secondly, if that agreement goes in place according to plan, when do you expect payments, and how will the payments come? Will it be with lump sum, or will it be spread throughout the different stages? Thank you.
The contract negotiation, the consortium say is that since EU choose to go out and officially announce that they have started, they have given the grant and invited for contract negotiations, it means that they are pleased with the application we sent. The consortium therefore say that they will refile the application as it is. The contract negotiations, I don't know the details of it, but as far as I understand it is they look at it more as a formality than actual negotiations. It will be a possibility for changing the program and so on, but as far as I understand, that is better to do later to not make everything too complex. The consortium expect it to be signed before the end of the year.
The payment schedule, the program we have asked for money for includes work packages. When we are finished the work packages, we will get paid for it. It will maybe be lump sum payments during the period to finance some of it, but that will be from SoftOx investors. I don't think it will be big difference in the need of funding in the company due to the fact that we must have a more long-term financing in the company than the scheduled payments frequency say that we shall have. The most important for me with the EDF is the purchase. You've got the product here that you can develop. We expect it to cost extra, I don't know, NOK 500-600 million or something.
It's less than 10% of what we expect to sell before per year. It is the contract, the willingness to pay for the product development and buy the product directly from us. We don't need distributors and all this stuff on this product. We will sell it directly to the EU, directly to partnering countries. It will surprise me if it will also not be more profitable for SoftOx in the end than the civil solution, where we have to first pay the partner to take it to market, then we have to pay the pharmacy for selling it and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, we have received some questions here on the webcast as well. Is there anyone here in the audience, or should we move over? Okay. Start with the first one. Any idea why your disinfection products still do not sell any despite its outperforming any existing product? Had any response from the hospitals after your latest results from Hemsedal? Give it to you.
Regarding the response from the hospital on the Hemsedal project, Hemsedal project showed clearly that SoftOx was more environmentally friendly for the working environment than an alcohol, which is the dominant substance on the disinfection side. I have not received any responses on that part. What we have received a lot of responses on, and actually we have had user tests in hospitals on, is the skin friendliness. There we are clearly better. The users clearly report that they experience our solution better. The reason why it hasn't happened anything is because SoftOx shall not distribute. We shall not build up a huge distribution organization sending people around in the country. We want partners to do that for us that already have people out there selling.
As long as we don't have an approval, the partners say, "We can't take it aboard before you have the approval, simply because we can't invest in a product that may be had to be withdrawn from the market six months down the road." Therefore, we are waiting for the European Chemicals Agency to give us the approval so we can start to work.
Next, question. Something new on the multi-products.
The multi-products. The multi-product decision was delayed a little bit by the Ministry of Defense for internal reasons. I have heard some speculations on what the internal reasons are, but I don't think it's correct of me to give speculations. What I have been informed is that we can expect an answer in third quarter.
Yes. Thank you. That was all from the webcast. Any more in the audience? No. Then I think it's time to call it a day.
Thank you.