Special Report: Synergen Met – recently named among Stockhead’s IPOs to watch – is looking to list around June and undertaking a $20-25m placement with a valuation at IPO of $120-125m.

Synergen Met’s Chief Executive Officer and managing director Christopher Dunks spoke exclusively to Stockhead this week ahead of one of 2022’s more exciting initial public offers.

The Aussie thermal plasma specialist has a simple brief – deploying its in-house technology to provide big (and little) industry with real, sustainable solutions that literally annihilate all those harmful emissions everyone’s been going on about.

For more than 14 years Dunks’ team of quietly obsessive scientists – mainly out of the University of Queensland – have been developing and working with plasma technology with a pretty simple and elegant aim to detoxify industry.

And from Perth to Poughkeepsie, there’s quite a big market there.

 

Fighting the future with hydrogen

“Synergen is an Australian-owned and operated business made up of a team of truly amazing scientific minds with more than 80 years of collective experience working within the global resources industry,” Dunks told Stockhead.

“And over the last 14 years, through a combination of research, innovation, a lot of trial and error in the lab, and through extensive field trials, Synergen has been able to leverage and deploy our Thermal Plasma Technology platform into multiple high-value applications.”

The one turning heads right now is a cracker – Dunks’ team are using thermal plasma as a destroyer of that most heinous of pollutants, the ubiquitous “forever chemical” PFAS.

 

Meet Per-fluorinated Alkylated Substances (unfortunately, you already have)

Per-fluorinated alkylated substances (PFAS) are persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT). And they’re absolutely everywhere.

Industry is choking the planet and its waterways with these emissions and Dunks and the Synergen lab guys are utterly obsessed with killing it, and he says they’ve cracked the riddle of how to.

Dunks says Synergen has been positioning itself for a decade and a half to ensure it goes public at the leading edge of the PFAS solution.

“Even now, when we talk about the ‘forever’ chemical, PFAS, heaps of us still see red,” he said.

“Synergen is rolling out innovative, proprietary technology that concentrates the PFAS molecule and then destroys it, converting it to a harmless, non-toxic substance.”

 

The timing is no coincidence

Ever since Glasgow COP26, the global industrial community has started looking up and there’s been a universal light bulb moment – a step change in the way big business understands their duty to address the climate crisis. ESG principles are not only a given, industry is actively competing to get out ahead on it and companies want to show – prove – that they aren’t the ones dragging their feet.

And the really giant breakthrough in that time is the emergence of clean hydrogen. That’s Synergen’s bread and butter.

“A major part of the revolution that is needed in reducing and eliminating greenhouse gas emissions involves hydrogen,” Dunks says.

“Synergen is building capability to play a leading role in both the production of clean hydrogen and the rolling out of the enabling technology.”

 

On the ground, ready to roll

In fact, this is an Aussie hydrogen specialist which is already on the ground with the fully developed proprietary technologies and innovative applications that industry is crying out for right now.

And the investment opportunity – aside from the incredibly broad applications hydrogen provides in reducing and eliminating greenhouse gas emissions – is within the Synergen business model. A model that’s looking a lot like Australia’s first vertically integrated hydrogen solution.

Dunks says, aside from Synergen’s existing applications, the firm has conditionally agreed to acquire Phoenix Solutions Co (Phoenix), a business founded over 50 years ago which specialises in the production of high temperature plasma equipment for the global industrial community.

 

As Dr Peter Venkman says: We have the tools, and they have the talent

Post-IPO, Dunks says SH2 will begin its hydrogen roll-out strategy starting with the TLOU Energy project, to construct two PFAS destruction facilities (one in Australia and one in South Carolina next door to Lockheed Martin and BMW ), to construct multiple PFAS concentration facilities, to design, fabricate and operate a carbon separation facility, and to provide a working capital injection into Phoenix.

And after 14 years with their eyes on the prize, Dunks and his co-founder Dr Geoff Duckworth have surrounded themselves with not only scientific talent, but a carefully crafted board with compelling expertise and experience in the industrial-tech sector.

“Everything we do is about efficiency and minimising waste. That’s why we only ever advance the company’s strategy and business goals in an absolutely cost-effective manner,” Dunks says.

“When we go public that’ll remain part of our mantra – a beautiful solution, delivered cleanly, efficiently, for everyone.”

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This article was developed in collaboration with Synergen Met, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

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