Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Tidewater Renewables Annual General Meeting conference call. At this time, the lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we'll conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Tuesday, May 30th, 2023. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rob Colcleugh. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the annual general special meeting of the shareholders of Tidewater Renewables Ltd. My name is Rob Colcleugh, and I'm the Interim Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the corporation. I'll be the chairman for this meeting.
In terms of our agenda today, we'll first deal with the formal business of our annual general and special meeting, as described in the proxy materials that were sent to shareholders. Following the formal part of the meeting, I'll open the floor and the phone lines. I'll be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
A presentation that I'll review following the formal business during the meeting is contained on our website. If you're on the phone or line, you can access it now. The meeting will now move...
Will now come to order. I'll ask Brian Moran, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary of the corporation, to act as secretary of the meeting, and Patricia Selby of the TSX Trust Company, to act as scrutineer of the meeting. I now request the secretary to table proof of delivery of the notice of the meeting, instrument of proxy, management information circular, and accompanying documents to the registered shareholders of the corporation.
Proof of mailing of the notice calling the meeting and accompanying documents has been duly filed. I direct a copy of the notice with proof of delivery to be kept by the secretary with the records of this meeting. I'd like to take a moment to discuss the voting procedures. The voting will not occur over the phone line.
Voting will be in person in the meeting room or by proxy duly submitted. Any shareholder or proxy holder wishing to speak is requested to identify themselves, and when recognized by the chair, provide his or her name before addressing the meeting.
Any shareholder who's on the phone line, please hold your questions until the end of the meeting when we are opening the phone lines for questions. The bylaws of the corporation provide that a quorum of shareholders is present at a meeting of shareholders if at least two holders of not less than 25% of the shares entitled to vote at a meeting of shareholders are present in person or by proxy.
I've received the scrutineer's report showing that there are, in attendance at this meeting, in person or proxy, or by proxy, 64 shareholders holding 33 million, 6,000, 431 common shares. The total representation at this meeting by shareholders present in person and by proxy, is 95.061% of the common shares of the corporation.
I declare that there is quorum present at this meeting. I now declare that the meeting is regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. First item of business of this meeting is to receive and consider the audited financial statements of the corporation for the financial year ended December 31st, 2022, and report of the auditors thereon. I ask that the secretary of the meeting to present these financial statements to the meeting.
Copies of the financial statements and the report of the auditor thereon have been mailed to each registered shareholder, and they have an opportunity to review these documents, so I request a resolution dispensing with the reading of the auditor's report.
I move that the reading of the report of the auditor and the financial statements be dispensed with.
I second the motion.
All those in favor signify in the usual manner by raising their right hand. Opposed? Motion is carried. Next item on business is the fixing of the size of the board of directors to be elected at the meeting. For the forthcoming year, it is proposed that the board of directors to be elected at the meeting shall consist of three members. I now request a motion to fix the board of directors at the three members.
I move that the board of directors of the corporation be elected at the meeting to be fixed at three members.
I second the motion.
All those in favor signify in the usual manner by raising their right hand. Opposed? Motion is carried. We'll now proceed with the election of the directors. Three directors will be elected at this time to hold office until the next annual meeting or until their successors are elected or appointed.
I nominate the following individuals as directors of the corporation to hold office until the next annual election of directors or until their successors are elected or appointed, subject to the provisions of the Business Corporations Act and the bylaws of the corporation. RRobert Colcleugh, Greta Raymond, John Adams.
I second the motion.
Are there any further nominations? I now declare that the nominations are closed. In favor of the elections of these nominated, please signify in the usual manner by raising your right hand. Opposed?
I now declare that Those nominated to be duly elected directors of the corporation to hold office until the next annual election of directors, unless their office is vacated or by a successor, is appointed in accordance with the bylaws of the corporation.
The next item of business is the appointment of the auditor of the corporation. The information circular and the instrument of proxy prepared for this purposes of the meeting, contemplated the reappointment of Deloitte LLP Chartered Accountants as auditors.
Could we have a motion with regard to the reappointment of the auditors until the next annual meeting, and could this motion provide that the auditor's remuneration be fixed by the board of directors?
I move that Deloitte LLP Chartered Accountants be reappointed as auditor of the corporation until the next annual meeting or until a successor is appointed, and that Deloitte remuneration be fixed at, of the board of directors.
I second the motion.
All those in favor signify by the usual manner, raising their right hand. Any opposed? The motion is carried. Next item of business is the advisory, non-binding shareholder vote in the corporation's approach to executive compensation. Me here or somebody replacing Denny?
I move on an advisory basis that the shareholders of the corporation accept the corporation's approach to executive compensation as disclosed in the information circular.
I second the motion.
All those in favor signify in the usual manner by raising their right hand. Any opposed? Motion is carried. If there's no further business to be brought before the meeting, I would ask for a motion to terminate the meeting.
I move to terminate the meeting.
I second the motion.
Okay. All those in favor signify in the usual manner by raising their right hand. Opposed? Motion is carried, and I declare the meeting terminated. We were going to go through the presentation, and I'm happy to do so, but it is primarily internal folks here.
Perhaps what we would best do is, open it up to any questions in case there are any questions on the line. Happy to answer those now. We can have a discussion afterwards, with regard to the presentation. The one thing I would ask is, if Phil could come up. Come on up, Phil. If we could maybe move to the, pictures. What we...
Obviously, the first and foremost thing or the thing at our top of our mind right now is our HDRD, which is Canada's first renewable diesel facility, being built, co-located at our Prince George refinery. I think that's it is timely to provide a bit of an update. There isn't any breaking news here, so there is no accompanying press release or anything else.
We are on budget, as we've said last time, and we're still looking at the end of June in terms of the startup. Maybe what I'd get Phil to do is if you want to go and point out some of the... I know, I apologize to the people on the line. Probably just go right up and point it there, and we can move it forward. We're just looking at a picture of the site.
Yeah.
Phil, is this the best one for you to talk through some of the-?
Sure. Picture. That's the tank farm. That's our new tank farm. Those tanks that are insulated there, that's our feedstock tanks. The unpainted tanks in the corner there are our sales tanks. Currently, we have feed canola in two of the tanks. We have water in one of the tanks, and we have some startup diesel in one of the sales tanks, which is all required for, obviously, startup.
From this view as well, this is our fire water tank right here, right next to our dry pond. Underground here, there's fire water lines that, and we have hydrants throughout the plant, so that's where that draws from. On this side of the rack, we have our utilities.
We have our two electrical buildings, our instrument air package, our glycol system, our water filtration, steam generation, and natural gas. You can't see the pretreatment in this, take your best, but there is another. This is inside. Yeah, this is a close-up of our tank farm. Like I said before, that there's both feedstock and renewable diesel now in these tanks and ready for us to start processing through the plant.
Go back. This, the pretreatment, it's kind of hard to show without going to a floor. This happens to be the top floor of our pretreatment. This floor has the least amount of piping. This overall building has five kilometers worth of piping, so it's the biggest one area in the facility. We're well into mechanical system handover in here.
Electrically, we're well into dry commissioning, checking all the instrumentation. All the motors have been checked. We've had the licensor now on site. For the first visit, they're coming back early June to start running. They actually start with water through this process to prove it out, so that'll be happening here in the first week of June. This is our renewable diesel unit area.
This had all the specialty metallurgy, which is the last area we're completing. There was some late stuff, the world ran out of some of the specialty metals, but we have most of our manpower in here right now. You can see on top of that reactor, the last of the catalyst loading is going in right now. It's actually completed today.
Now all the catalyst on site has been completed as of today, and I think that there's only some ammonia left to go into our SCR unit. We're basically substantially complete all first fills across the facility. I don't know, what other picture I put in. Did I put another one? We didn't put the area up here because it's a month. We didn't put the area one just because it's a month old now.
Yeah, no worries. Okay, thanks.
I don't know if this-
Um...
Okay.
Yeah, well, that's a good overview. Let's just see if there are any questions on the line. I'll take them now. Otherwise, I've just shut the formal part of the presentation down. Operator, do you have any?
There are nobody over the phone at this time.
Okay, well, then we'll shut that down, and, thanks for your time.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. Thank you.