Graphene manufacturer Versarien is set to double the size of its production facility in Gloucestershire, creating a number of highly skilled research jobs.
The advanced engineering materials company told BusinessLive construction of a 10,000 sq ft innovation centre at its site in the Forest of Dean has been completed, with the firm now just waiting for the facility to be supplied with electricity.
The laboratory space, an expansion of the firm's existing premises in Longhope business park, has been earmarked for future projects and job creation, including researcher, technician and engineering roles.
Chief executive Neill Ricketts said the total number of new recruits would depend on the variety and amount of projects the AIM-listed company is able to secure next.
Versarien creates commercially viable products from graphene, a material made from a single layer of carbon atoms, for the construction, clothing, biomedical and aerospace sectors.
Research has found graphene - which originally came from graphite, used in pencil tips - to be the world’s thinnest material, which despite its flexibility can be 200 times stronger than steel.
Versarien believes graphene - which won the Nobel Prize for Physics for the University of Manchester scientists that first isolated a sheet of the material - has remarkable properties that have the potential to revolutionise entire industries.
The company has secured a series of high-profile partnerships over the past 12 months. It is currently developing graphene enhanced clothing for fashion chain - and fellow Gloucestershire firm - Superdry, which will be designed to have a longer lifespan and lower environmental impact on creation.
Versarien’s technology will also be used by sportswear brand Umbro - suppliers of Premier League football side West Ham and the England rugby team since - in an upcoming range of training kit.
Mr Ricketts, who co-founded Versarien in a garage at the start of its journey to commercialise the “wonder material” in 2010, admitted seeing “our little company” striking deals with global brands did not feel real at times, comparing the experience to “viewing the world from a third party”.
“One of the problems of being a CEO is that you don't necessarily see the world in the same way that everybody else sees it. And so when I was talking five years ago about these companies wanting to use our technology, and we would make it onto the high street, I think everybody thought I was a little bit crazy.
“And now we're starting to see that and we can take you to places where we’ve used graphene-enhanced concrete, like big ice rinks, and you see thousands of people skating on it.
“It's kind of like an alternative reality really, where you can't comprehend the technology you're developing is all over the place. And that'll only get better as we develop more technologies and get more opportunities.”
From its humble beginnings, Versarien has gone on to acquire other companies, list on the stock market and been in the company of presidents and prime ministers.
The company has secured £7m of UK government funding, including a £2m defence contract to develop composite structures in military applications such as bridge building, as well as a £5m innovation loan to explore its potential use in tyres, packaging and construction.
Mr Ricketts said it was easy to be overwhelmed by the number of business opportunities graphene could offer, and Versarien had chosen to focus on textiles and construction as “big wins in the short term”.
The company is currently developing graphene-infused concrete and mortar for structures created with 3D printing technology. Mr Ricketts explained this had the potential to help reduce traditional building costs and ultimately lead to more affordable and environmentally friendly housing.
“What we're putting all our effort into at the moment is using recycled materials - being able to actually get a situation where you turn up on site, knock down the building that's there, recycle the materials, add the graphene and the rest of additives that are needed, and then reprint a new structure without actually having to leave site.
“A lot of the time, especially in concrete construction, the actual cost is in the logistics. And so if you can reduce the logistics, you can drastically reduce the cost. 3D printing allows you a lot more flexibility around creating structures, especially if you consider things like flood defence or things in our day-to-day life.
“If you're building a structure next to a live railway live, you have to switch that line off for the time that you're doing the construction. And so the disruption is drastic, whereas if you're doing that part off site, then that's not the case.
“What would normally take weeks for a team of builders to create, our robot can create in a matter of hours. So it has huge potential for humanitarian relief and some of the events we're seeing in Europe.”
Mr Ricketts said the parts of the clothing it was working on for Superdy were now in production in China, having made it through challenges presented by the country’s current Covid lockdown restrictions.
The businessman said disruption to the global supply chain caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine had made textile companies more aware of the need to make “better choices”.
“If you think that your very cheap white t-shirt that you can buy on the high street takes five gallons of water to produce, you can see the environmental impact of some of these products that we just take for granted, as well as things like packaging.
“The textile companies know a lot of their products don't actually even make it to people; they're put into a landfill store with the labels on, which is a kind of a situation that just won't be sustainable in the future."
Mr Ricketts said the pandemic had "changed" the way people dress for work - and as a result the whole textile industry was now going through a "massive change".
“I think that change will only get greater as more regulation and taxation comes into place to make some of our choices more sustainable," he said.
“It's very hard to actually recycle a lot of clothing because it's all made of different fabrics and materials. We need to simplify that, and we're going towards clothing which is made of the same material. Graphene has a part to play in that by changing the physical properties of the material for different applications.”
Versarien currently employs between 100 and 120 people across its global operations, of which around 10 are based at its Gloucestershire factory.
In addition to its three laboratories in the UK, Versarien has a research facility in Madrid, where its Spanish subsidiary Gnanomat, has recently developed a different new material with magnetic properties it says can boost sustainable practice across a range of sectors.
In Asia, as well as its operation in China, It also has a subsidiary in South Korea working on electronics applications for graphene using “really precise, thin films” that are used in sensors.
Versarien previously secured a £1.93m investment from a South Korean tech firm, Graphene Lab, following a visit supported by government innovation agency Innovate UK EDGE. The investment later led to access to research and development facilities in the country.
In June, Versarien announced a new partnership with Dubai-based sports and leisurewear manufacturer OG Classic to bring graphene-enhanced fabrics to the Middle Eastern textiles market.
Mr Ricketts said North and South America also presented Versarien with “huge amounts of opportunity”. The company is currently exploring a range of markets in the US, “from coatings to bicycles”, while some projects with Brazil’s largest steel manufacturer, Gerdau, were also “moving in the right direction”.
With a growing global presence, Mr Ricketts said it was “fitting” Versarien has its roots in the Forest of Dean, given the area’s historic connection to the development of the iron and steel industries.
Mr Ricketts drew comparison to innovations of the past in explaining why he believes graphene is a “wonder material” worth paying attention to.
“The analogy of a graphene industry is very much when we transition from horses to cars. In the 1920s, there were very few cars on the roads. They were owned by the rich, horses were used by everybody else. Here we are, 100 years later, and we all own cars.
"Graphene is very much like that. A lot of people are saying, ‘why do we need these new materials, what can they offer?’"
One example of where graphene can "play a big part", said Mr Ricketts, is in the manufacture of mobile phone batteries.
He explained: "If you have a mobile phone, the thing that frustrates you most is not only the cost of it, because it uses a lot of rare earth materials, but also the battery life, and graphene can play a big part in energy. It is challenging the way we create batteries, the way we formulate the chemicals within those batteries to create much better, smaller batteries, or batteries that have much bigger capacity."
And that is just one area in which graphene is really starting to make changes.
"Products are just starting to be launched with that kind of enhancement," he added.
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