gold news

  I'm Georgia Williams. This is the Investing News Network and we're here at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference and joining me today is Dan Sutton, CEO of Syntholene Energy, which trades on the TSXV at ticker symbol ESAF. Thank you for joining me today. >> Thanks so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here with you. >> How's the conference been so far? >> It's been really fun. This is mostly a mining and resource conference. So, we're more in the specialty fuels and

energy sector, but I got lots of friends that are having a really good time with this recent resource boom, precious metals boom. So, it's nice to see some energy in the room. >> Absolutely. And can you give us a little bit of the background on synthylene? >> Absolutely. So, syntholene is in the business of producing specialty synthetic kerosene. This is fuel for jet turbines, jet airplanes, both civilian and military applications. And we are building, commercializing a technology

that was proven out at the Idaho National Lab in 2022, to be able to produce this high performance fuel that is still a commodity product, albeit a bit of a specialty commodity, targeting 70% lower costs than any other technology in the market. >> Wow. And the e- fuel industry is expected to grow from $8 billion in 2025 to 215 billion in 2032. What's driving this growth? And where is the increased adoption coming from? >> It's so fascinating. I was just at a conference in the Bahamas and then a big

road show in Toronto last week and of maybe 50 or 60 investors, not a single one had heard of this e-fuel sector. E-ules are synthetic hydrocarbon fuels. Instead of refining down from a fossil or biiobased crude, we actually design molecules to be exactly the kinds of molecules, hydrocarbon molecules that engines, motors, and turbines use around the world to the order of about 100 million barrels a day today. And the core drivers of this growth, I think, are increasingly self-interested purchases of these specialty high

performance fuels, but also a really interesting interwoven matrix of government mandates. Any European airline that lands at a European economic zone airport must consume this fuel to meet the European Union's increasing decarbonization mandates. And they also subsidize this fuel for purchase. So I think there's been a big push from governments in that region to see more clean fuel used carbon neutral fuels and we're the substantial beneficiaries of that as we come to market. >> And how is Syntholine you know

leveraging this increased interest and this increased demand. >> We have a lot of different conversations with different buyers. Sometimes they're airlines or airline groups. Sometimes they're fuel intermediaries and the reality is that these fuels are drastically under supplied. And it looks like that under supply is getting worse and worse. So we can come to airlines with the promise of high quality, high performance fuels. Fuels that are increasingly cost competitive relative to other incumbents. And they help these

airlines securely meet mandated consumption targets over the course of the next 5 to 10 years. And all of that is an increasingly valuable value proposition to our airline customers. >> Absolutely. You recently signed an expression of interest um with Iceland Air. Tell us about this agreement and what it means for the company. >> This is our first customer, Iceland Air. We operate our fuel synthesis infrastructure in the nation of Iceland. So, it's a really good political story for us to be producing hydrocarbon fuels

in Iceland, a nation that doesn't actually produce much by way of fossil fuels in Iceland for Iceland. at 25 million liters a year. That's 250 million liters over the course of 10 years. And it really helps Iceland Air be able to follow through on their mandated obligations to consume this fuel as well as their own internal decarbonization mandates. But I think what's really interesting to us is Iceland Air is a relatively small airline. Airlines are consuming about 400 billion liters, 400 billion dollars,

excuse me, worth of aviation fuel every year around the world. And so this is just a taste of what the scope of this market could be and what the future of expansion of this agreement or potentially additional agreements for other airlines in the same size range or even larger airlines might need to consume. >> And where would you like to see the company grow in the next 5 years? The first thing we've got to do is translate our labscale prototype infrastructure that was demonstrated once again at

Idaho National Lab into the world's first practical real world demonstration facility. Syntholene aspires to have this demonstration facility operational by the end of 2026. And what that will be what that will represent is the world's first demonstration of actual lowcost synthetic fuel production pathways. And I think that that unlocks a massive growth of opportunity for us. If we can show that this works practically, it works adjacent to real world energy assets and that we can produce this fuel in a cost competitive

way, then the scope of our ambition is no less than many billions of liters a year of production and scoping up our production infrastructure to meet the increasing demands of the aviation industry and beyond. >> And we looked 5 years into the future. What can investors expect in 2026? >> 2026 core focus demonstration facility. Demonstration facility enhance substantially derisks the technology aspect of what we do. And with customers increasingly coming in to not just expressions of interest but actual

formal long-term supply contracts that will substantially derisk the commercial aspects of our business. So then the risk seems to center around can we actually deploy the production infrastructure that we need to meet these contracts on time and on budget. We've got a team that's done a lot of it before. We've built a lot of gear. We've put a lot of metal in the ground. And so 2026 demonstration facility opening up our ambitions to be actually able to increasingly deploy production scale

infrastructure of this fuel. >> And will that be in Iceland or is it in Idaho? in Iceland is where our core footprint will be certainly for these first uh few increments of commercial scale production. But it's entirely feasible that we could produce this fuel in various geothermally active regions around the world. Places like Alaska, Utah, Nevada, Indonesia, uh Italy, there's a lot of cool places with really active geothermal resources. And while we're really excited about Iceland, we

want to build as much fuel infrastructure as we can there. That's not the end of our story, I don't think. >> Yeah. Uh, it's a global potential. >> Absolutely. >> Well, thank you so much, Dan, for sharing the story of Syntholene with us today. >> George, it's such a pleasure. >> I'm Georgia Williams. This is the Investing News Network.