News Issue September 2022

Welcome to Issue Number 42 of the Calix Newsletter.

“As the financial year draws to a close, it is timely to reflect upon Calix’s considerable achievements over the last 12 months.

In September 2021, we announced the conclusion of our first “spin-out”, where 7% of the LEILAC Group (focussing on decarbonisation of cement and lime) was sold to US impact investor Carbon Direct for €15m. Calix will also continue to earn 30% of the royalty income into the LEILAC Group as a license fee, regardless of our ownership %. The deal is the first manifestation of our over-arching strategy to develop the next application of the technology and seek purpose-funding to commercialise, whilst retaining maximum head company value. We have been steadily building the LEILAC Group team as well as the project pipeline, and in May this year we were very pleased to announce two Australian-based projects with Boral and Adbri, with a combined $41m in federal Government support. An article on these two projects is in this newsletter.

In May 2022, we were also very pleased to announce $20m in Federal Government support for a project we are putting together with Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS). This project, to produce locally-manufactured lithium salts for batteries, is featured in this newsletter also. Our ambition is to produce low-carbon lithium here in Australia, and avoid the shipment of 94% waste material, as per the current situation in Australia, where spodumene (an ore containing about 6% lithium) is mined and shipped off-shore for processing. There is increasing focus on carbon emissions in the battery supply chain, and our project with Pilbara Minerals is anticipating increased demand for lower emissions products. There is also increasing alignment and interest in Australia in producing more here, rather than “digging it up and shipping it off-shore”. We look forward to working with Pilbara Minerals on this exciting project.

On a similar theme, our advanced battery materials team made great progress during FY22, with the on-going development and then pilot-scale production of 350 kg of lithium manganese oxide cathode material, for assembly into pouch cells in a commercial production line in the UK by battery maker AMTE. This step is critical to proving we can produce quantities of material consistently in order to proceed to the next stage of scale-up, which is targeting 150Tpa electrode manufacturing capability as part of the Recycling and Energy Storage Commercialisation Hub (REACH) Trailblazer program lead by Deakin University. This newsletter features our advanced battery materials team and this recent significant progress.

Our biotech business also made great progress in FY22, achieving registration of our BOOSTER-Mag crop protection product here in Australia, great results from our marine coatings trials, and also a boost to progress our anti-“superbug” application with the recent announcement of the “CRC SAAFE” program, a $34.5m research and development partnership, of which Calix is a tier 1 partner. The CRC SAAFE program is looking at controlling superbugs, whose evolution is rapidly out-pacing current antibiotics, posing significant human and animal risk. We are proud to be working with the likes of the University of Queensland’s  Centre for Superbug Solutions on this exciting and critical initiative.

The Calix team is core to achieving these significant outcomes and central to our success going  forward, and we feature several new members of our team in this newsletter, as well as several members who have been with us a while. The Calix team thanks you for your interest and support in our continued efforts to develop great businesses that solve significant global challenges.”

Phil Hodgson, CEO