TyraTech is a London quoted corporate minnow focused on nature derived insect and parasite control treatments. For years, like other small clean-tech and renewable energy groups, the company battled to clear seemingly interminable regulatory hurdles and establish commerciality for its products. This put pressure on its cash resources to the point of exhaustion. The group’s [...]
Equatorial Palm Oil (EPO), a London-based company quoted on AIM, recently released its interims for the six-months up to 31 March 2018. EPO’s main asset is a 50 per cent share in Liberian Palm Development (LPD), which has started, or rather re-started, developing commercial palm oil production in Liberia. (West Africa was the original home [...]
In our reporting on the renewable/alternative energy sector we have come across a number of start-up groups that have raised what seemed like large amounts of money. These funds were then spent establishing the commercial possibilities of their innovative – and sometimes unproven – products; and overcoming regulatory hurdles. This meant that revenues stayed low [...]
It would be a gross exaggeration to suggest that the game is over for Good Energy, the creator and supplier of energy which is totally derived from green and renewable sources. But it would not be too far of a push to say Good Energy had what companies call a “challenging year’ in 2017. Signals [...]
Having written about IGas Energy’s conventional oil and gas activities recently, in a second article we now look at fracking for shale gas in the UK and the company’s role as a player in the activities. On April 3 this year the oil and gas exploration company Caudrilla said it had completed the first horizontal [...]
IGas Energy and Fracking: In big picture terms, the financial future of IGas is caught up with the prospects for fracking in the UK. But not entirely. There is a coherent oil and gas story here alongside a fracking story. So we are again trying to cover the situation, as we did when we last [...]
Drax Group’s main claim to fame in recent years is that it has transformed itself from being an entirely coal-to-energy producer to a renewable energy provider. Three of the company’s six generating units are powered by compressed wood pellets and the company is looking at converting a fourth coal unit to wood pellets. The switch [...]
Hydrodec Group’s recent history is similar, if not identical, to that of another clean tech AIM-listed minnow we wrote about recently called Eden Research. Both companies went through available funds as they struggled to establish commerciality for their output. They encountered technical problems with their innovative products or had to overcome regulatory hurdles along the [...]
Eden Research describes itself as a company that provides breakthrough biopesticides and natural microencapsulation technologies to the global agrochemicals, animal health and consumer products industries. The company developed its first agrochemical product that was called 3AEY (now known as Mevalone) which is a fungicide which targets botrytis, a mould that causes diseases in grapes. Eden [...]
I first knew Dan Southerland from our reporting days in Southeast Asia in the 1970s. He worked for the Christian Science Monitor and then The Washington Post and did long stints in Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) and China. He covered energy issues for The Washington Post for a few years when he was working [...]