Yes, good morning all, and hello, and very, very welcome to the first quarter report 2022. Carl-Johan Linér, CEO of the company SaltX, and with my side here I have Harald Bauer, CFO.
Good morning to all of you.
Again, very welcome to this presentation. We released our report at 8:00 A.M. this morning Swedish time. We have recently had our Swedish presentation and now we have the English one. We will go through some slides here and please write your questions meantime, and we will come back to the questions after the presentation.
First quarter 2022, it's been quite a little bit turbulence in the world and we have also made some adjustments to the environmental situation where we have actually been working more and more closer and closer to our customers, particularly the industrial side. Before I go into that, I can also mention that we have had our annual general meeting a week ago, 10 days ago. It was a physical meeting in our office here in Sweden, in Stockholm. That was very pleasant to have that and sort of be back to more normal procedure as we had in the past. It's the fourth of May now, and it's actually precisely three years ago since I started the company, joined the company as CEO.
It's in very many aspects it's not, it's another sort of company. In the beginning, we were looking very focused on the material side itself but we realized pretty soon that the charging reactor and discharging reactor was very much depending on the material, and the material was depending on the reactor. We had to look at as it was as a function. Today we are more and more getting into the system thinking and system perspective and taking the full responsibility of the installation. Because with the support of our global experienced good partners as we have, we can do that.
I think that it's very, very important to build that competence to have that. In the long run, we will probably not build the complete installations, but we have to have the competence inside our offices. I can say also that during the time I've been here around here now for three years, it's been a change in the interest of course. We all know about the global targets as we have from Paris and the latest COP in Glasgow, and it's coming up a new COP in Egypt later on this year also. There will be an ongoing pressure on getting into the fossil-free world. That is certainly a great help for us.
The demand is there for storages, but the market needs to be more clear and more specific where and how and what to be installed energy storage applications inside. We are on a journey. We are on a journey to a fossil-free society. This is what it's all about, really, renewable energy on demand. The wind or the sun, by the way, we cannot control it. We don't we cannot control, we cannot put push a button and then it will start to blow. In other words, we need to have some other things, and that is then the energy storage usage to make this controllable. It is a lot of demand.
The country or the city or an area or an industry decide to go into the renewable, they need energy storage applications. We see ourselves as an enabler to make this possible. We only tried a couple of times to put figures on the potential demand in dollars or euros or whatever, but we only know it's huge. It's very, very big. It's gonna be even more big in the future. There will be a number of technical solutions. We will of course not be the only solution here. We are very, very welcome. In the last session, we got a lot of questions about the competitors.
Of course, we welcome competition and that's secure that the energy storage market will develop. Renewable energy on demand, remember that. That's a very important statement. That's what it's all about. SaltX Technology, who are we? Well, you maybe know this, but for some newcomers, we know you, we are a Swedish-based company, but we have been around for many years. Since 2016, we went on the stock market. We are also participating in a number of competitions and one of the latest was Helsinki Energy Challenge where we actually won one of, I think it was more than 250 applications from well-known companies from companies that's been around for a very, very long time.
We became one of the four winners of this competition. This was all about to make Helsinki a fossil-free city. That we came up with a package solution with a lot of storages of course. We are working with a scalable technology. That means that we can scale up the power, and we can scale up the capacity of the storage. Very important is since we are a small company, but innovative company, is that we work with the right technical partners, the global technical partners that could support us and help us, and we can support them with our core technology also. We have this unique storage solution with a very clear map for commercialization.
We have a couple of significant events. We have had during the first quarter, we had thre press releases, and after the end of the period, we have additional three press releases. We have never, at least not during my time, three years here, ever had so many newsletters, so many significant events during pretty short time. This is possible because of the competence and the know-how and experience that we have in our company, and people in our organization find solutions to our challenges. The first one to mention here from left to right is actually the Norrenergi cooperation that we have.
It's a pre-study, and the reason why we were talking to Norrenergi is purely because they have seen our results in Helsinki Challenge. Because of that, they took contact with us, and they wanted to have a similar mini Helsinki study in Norrenergi. That we are working with at the moment, and I can't tell when it's ready or what the conclusion will be. The only thing we know is that Norrenergi want to become fossil-free or to reduce the emission at least in the very near future. This is sort of very much driven by the politicians and in this community.
This is sort of decisions we welcome very much, so we can establish a good application for the storages. The second one in the middle is the project in Luleå. You know that we came out with a press release for some time now, more than a year ago, that we wanted to utilize the waste heat in the production of the steel industry, sort of the gas waste heat and to store the storages. We started with a pre-study even there together with Sverige. That came out as, how should I say? It came out as not the latest technology and not the latest trend.
You know probably that in Luleå there is a steel producer, and the steel producer wants to go for green steel. That was very important for us to follow the green steel initiative. We have a little bit changed the direction of this pre-study. The pre-study is still going on, but it's extremely interesting now to follow the green steel initiative that we could support this initiative by our technology. It's gonna be very interesting, and it's good to know and to feel that we are in the front run of the technology and we are supporting this initiative. We are an enabler to make this happen and to increase the climate aspect in the production.
The third one is actually an innovation that we call it an innovation because we think it's a major step. We, looked in many ways how to find an optimal charging reactor. We will actually take in this initiative by ourselves, and we started to develop a charging reactor with a special technique. I will come back to that a little bit later on also to tell you more about that. It's certainly an innovation, and we have a patent pending for this application. This is really something new. I mean, we have, for the charging reactor in Bollmora, we have Calix. For the discharging reactor, we are talking to Sundsvall and Forsvik.
Here we have an innovation that we have a patent pending, as I said, but it's our own IP rights in this reactor here. It works. We work together with some partners here of course also, but it's a very important strategic innovation for us to have our arms around this innovation. I will come back, as I said, later on to that, later on. The milestones that we have, you've probably seen this before also, that 2017 we said it was the birthday of our energy storage concept.
After that we actually had some smaller installations in Stockholm here and in a container, but we took the decision to build an installation in Berlin at Vattenfall premises in Berlin. We actually opened up that plant in April 2019. That was again a Power to Steam installation with a 0.5 MW power and 10 MWh capacity. That plant was opened up, as I said, in 2019, and the plan we had was really to change technology of the reactors because we needed another sort of technology to scale up, to come up to bigger sizes of storages.
The COVID pandemic came along and the plant in Germany was actually closed, and we said that we have to go on, we have to continue our journey. We took the decision that we were building our own pilot in Stockholm here. Still Vattenfall, still Vattenfall Bollmora and we took the experience that we got from Berlin and we brought it to Stockholm and we developed this now the technology which was based on fluidized bed technology to as a charging actually a falling bed reactor for the charging and a fluidized bed for discharging reactor. We are preparing now. We are. I will come back later on with a picture of that one, but we are at the end of the Stockholm pilot.
We will start continuous testing program in the near future. We are preparing for pre-commercial storage projects and 2023 we hope to be able to announce a couple of pre-commercial projects. What we have also seen and what has changed over the years is actually that the questions and the interest have developed of the energy storage products. We have got recently quite a lot of interest from the industry. What we are working with now is also to develop a sort of application for the energy storage industry.
They don't store the energy for such a long time in industry and they are using more frequent discharging and recharging, but it actually is that they are charging with renewable energy, renewable electricity, and they are discharging the steam that the industry is then using in their production. We are also preparing for calcination projects and pilots based on this new innovation. I come back to that later on also. Looking at the Bollmora situation, the milestones of Bollmora, it has taken us almost two years now from we started 2020 in September to make the system design. We took contact with Sumitomo SHI FW.
We actually started to make our own design of the reactor, but after a while we took contact with Sumitomo SHI FW or they took contact with us, and we did some development together and a discharging reactor was produced together with Sumitomo SHI FW, and it was actually installed half a year later, a little bit more than that. Discharging installed April 2021. In the meantime, we did some part tests on our journey. Some tests failed, some tests were successful. We adjusted it and we came into some changes and we together find new solutions because this is something new. Sumitomo SHI FW have used fluidized bed for 135 years or whatever it is, but they have never fluidized such a material as we have here.
It was a challenge for them also, but now it's installed and after that we started with the charging reactor. It's a falling bed reactor from Calix. And it's based on a principle that you put in the material on the top and then you are heating it up. Once it's falling down, the material at the very end of it, you get out calcium oxide. Now both of them together with the subsystem is installed, it's in place, and we have done some upgrades also, and we are now ready for doing the continuous testing, and we will of course inform you once we have this, we have the results.
You also see that the pilot partners at Sumitomo, SSAB, Vattenfall, and Alfa Laval. Alfa Laval is quite interesting also because they see a lot of interest in this because if they can utilizing the heat exchanger principles, and they can make the total installation more efficient. And they also see, of course, their own interest to make business in this also, which is fine. I mean, it's to us, it's important that we work with those global partners that are big and they have the experience and they have the know-how. Why do I spend so much time looking at these Bollmora ? Well, it's good for all of us to understand that we are developing something which is pretty difficult and we.
It takes time. That's what I'm saying. The next installation, the next pilot will necessarily don't take as long time as this one, since we have done some learnings and experience from this one. It's a system thinking here. Renewable energy, it's all about peak shifting. You know that. I think I mentioned that in the beginning also a little bit, that you have to charge the battery, you have to charge the material once the energy is cheap, and then you have to use it once it's expensive, so to say, to make good business out of it.
Looking on the comments that are made at the renewable energy on demand, it's actually that it's a way of, and energy storage makes it controllable, disregarding cheap or expensive energy. It's a way of taking the full step into a fossil-free situation. Many cities and many countries are working with this and once they are there, because it will happen, we are convinced it will happen, it's a question of time, they need storage application. Because if they install 100, they need 20 in energy storage to be able to control the supply. This picture you have maybe seen before. It's a slight modification of it.
We see that we are still aiming for the big capacity, the high capacity from 10 MWh and upwards. But the difference is that we have made an adjustments now for the industry a little bit shorter duration, storage duration, and we are talking about days here. That's a typical application for industry that they are charging and discharging, and then they're using the steam for in their production. But also there are other applications like the combined heat and power installations that needs long duration storage. It's a different application. Again, we are following the demand, we are following the market, and we are listening to our customers that wants to have this.
In a short duration industry, it's a slightly less complex solution than the other one. We are close to the customer, and that's the key thing here, really, to be close to the customer. Looking on the applications under development, heat to heat, power to steam, power to power. Yes, they are under development, but I want to be very clear on that the focus area is power to steam, no doubt about it. That's what we are focusing our efforts on. There are some discussions going on with the others also, heat to heat and power to power, and especially with some special partners that is looking at supporting us here.
There's no doubt about it. It's Power to Steam and it's the steam we find our solution very suitable for the industry. The industry is more precise in their requirements what they want. They know very well what they want and they know also that they can utilize the conversion to fossil-free production as a very good argument in their company also. We believe very much in an industry application. What is then the industry application?
Well, you can see it like this, that under the bottom of this picture you see that the conventional solution is really that you use oil or some other fossil fuel to store it in a tank or whatever. Then you use a conventional burner and you will release a lot of emission by doing that, of course. We all know that. This is, they're using the burner once they need a steam for the production. It's not 24/7, but they need it quite often.
A way to change that, this implication, is actually to utilize the solar and wind and through the electric grid, do the charging of the material as we have been looking into, and to have a heat storage where you can release the steam once you need it. It's the same principle that there are no emission on the upper case here. This makes it, of course, very attractive to this solution. The typical models for the storages is a charging reactor. I mentioned that. In Bollmora it's Calix. A discharging reactor is Sumitomo SHI FW. We have the storages. We don't have any major storage installed in Bollmora, but that's not an issue.
The thing is that we need to make the process itself, charging and discharging, verified from a technical point of view and we're also working with a third party verification of this case in Bollmora also. The material is supplied by Nordkalk and Wacker. Alfa Laval is a part of this. This is, you heard that and also ABB. The beauty with this solution is really that you can tailor-made it. You can make one power on the charging and another one on discharging. You can adjust the amount of material there then depending on what sort of charging capacity that you want. Now, let's spend a few words about this new innovation.
As I said, the background of this was really that we wanted to have a good charging reactor to make it possible to build large storage applications. We looked into various solutions here and we actually ended up doing the development by ourselves together with some partners. This is a strategic positioning for our company in a good way where we also have a patent pending for this innovation. What is it all about then? Well, it's about, we call it EAC, Electric Arc Calciner. That's the new charging reactor.
I will not go into any more details about that, but the EAC is actually suitable for the energy storage application, for charging the reactor, which means that we have a very powerful storage for the industry. The reactor itself is ours. We have the rights of it. We have the patent pending which is very important here also. But in addition of this, on top of this, we can also using this innovation for electrification of some of the industry, like the calcination industry, like the cement industry and also steel industry in mind. We are supporting and we are the enabler to make it possible to do this electrification.
Here we are of course in very close cooperation with ABB and other companies because they also have the mission and vision to do to electrify the world especially the industry. We have the same interest here, so to drive this electrification. That's another application for the EAC compared to the energy storage. That's important to remember. That's another, slightly another sort of temperature and process, but it's same basic principle. We are very excited about this and we think that this is gonna be a very interesting future. This is not anything that we have done on a PowerPoint or anything like that. This is just a real reality. We have made a test in the middle of Sweden for a number of weeks.
We have some results here of course, and it's very suitable to scale this technology up to higher power and also to very high temperature. Depends on what you compare with, but looking at the conventional technology and conventional process today in certain industries, this is going to be much more simplified processes and competitiveness will be high. Exactly what we will do here, we don't know yet because this is an additional leg actually to stand on in the company. We will come back to that later on. It's a sort of a breakthrough innovation.
Looking on the world and looking on the challenges that we have in the world, looking on the cement industry and the calcination industry, it corresponds to about 8% emission of the total. If you convert that into a country, it will be the country number three in the world to let the emission out. Looking on the production of quicklime, it's actually 400 million tons. Looking on the production of cement is 4,500 million tons. It's hard to understand really, it's hard to verify how much material, how much is utilized. But cement is the second used material that are going, are used in the world. The first is water, and then it comes cement.
We all understand that it's huge impact. It's huge potential. It's a lot of good thing that makes it possible to change the world here. It will not be done overnight of course, but it will be done in cooperation and together with some key partners, and ABB is one of them for sure. They also have very high interest in this technology and what we can do together here because they also, as I said, want to be electrified. The EAC Electric Arc Calciner, one application is the energy storage, another one is the electrification of the industry. Two separate applications. I think I stop there and let you say a few words, Harald, about the financial situation.
Where are we and how does it look like?
Thank you, Carl-Johan. I will be quick in commenting the financials. The issue to address is what do we do with our funds? How much do we spend? What do we accomplish? And how long time will the funds last? We are a company, we do research, we do development, and we do marketing of our solutions. The marketing currently consists of being in contact with our partners and customers to understand their needs and what they want and then develop the solutions we provide. We are developing and providing to those needs in line with what Carl-Johan has explained. Looking then at the numbers, you can see that we have spent bottom line a little bit less this quarter than the same quarter last year.
Last year during the whole year, we erected Bollmora, so we invested in purchasing the equipment and setting it up and then during the end of the year and going into 2020 and this year, we have spent resources in conducting tests there. This quarter, the money spent on Bollmora is less, but on the other hand, we have started then to continue the development of the Electric Arc Calciner for the two different applications. That's energy storage, as Carl-Johan explained, as well as then electrifying the lime industry. The difference in our result, you can see there that less, -12 this year quarter compared to -8 same quarter last year.
The difference is how much of our development that we capitalize, and there we have capitalized a little bit less this quarter, so therefore the result is lower this quarter than last year. On bottom line, we've spent pretty much the same kind of amount. We have a reasonably comfortable cash position. We always say we have funded the company through our shareholders. That's one of the reasons we are on the stock market as well as on public funding, both over EU's Horizon 2020 and the Swedish Energy Agency, Energimyndigheten, have provided us with funds, and we continue to apply to all sorts of sources in order to balance our cash needs from both sources. With that, I end.
Thank you, Harald.
My comments.
Very good. Let's get into the questions, analysis. See what questions we have.
A few years ago, you made the decision to only focus on EnerStore as greatest potential was identified there, but also to keep cost control and difficulty to focus on all other areas with a small organization. Are you not risking the same with all new focus areas, calcination or Energysphering Green Steel? Why not only go for sphering green steel?
That's a good question. I think that we keep to the focus that we have within the energy storage applications. We have developed this Energysphering reactor, this new innovation here, and that's an extra bonus, you can say that we have the possibility to electrify the industry also. But we are not taking any other directions into the company. You're right in saying that we have really put sort of an emphasis on keeping the costs under control in the company because the company has been much bigger before and spent a lot more money, but we have really made our efforts now to keep this under control.
Even if the financial figure looks a little bit worse than last time, you know, the cost is under control, still under control, very much so. Why not only go with Energysphering Green Steel? We will see. The pre-study is going on and we are excited about this of course, but we are also excited about the energy storage.
The opportunities we see in the areas that we now continue to develop are so promising that we will continue to work with these opportunities and then see which fruit will become ripe first.
Well-
There are no further questions.
What fruit do you think will be best, Harald?
I hedge my bets. Will advise that we continue on all fronts without becoming too thin on all fronts.
I think the issue is really that we're following the industry, we're following the customers, and we are close to them. Since we are that, I think we will make it possible for future success in one way or another. Whatever fruit it will be, we don't know, as Harald said, but there will be a fruit.
Okay.
Thank you everybody for calling in and listening, and talk to you later once we have the results and something more to inform you about. Thank you again.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye-bye.