Please find below the
Semi-Finalist Evaluation
Judges'' comments
This proposal is to construct a biochar facility for the cost of half a million dollars. The Judges had concerns about the cost and timeline of the activity.
As stated in the proposal, this method is being tried for many years and now some countries have established commercial plants even to export biochar. Malaysia is targeting Korea and Japan to export its biochar. Therefore, this project at small scale may not be feasible or novel.
Kyle Ferguson Oct 20, 2017 11:12
Member
| Proposal creator I appreciate the feedback. I understand how you could have concerns over already established competition. The biochar market is rapidly growing with a lot of old tech doing the production for most the material, creating a variable or not consistent material with varying performance for each application. Some countries are exporting biochar, but not all. To us, it looks like the very beginning of a robust market. Our differentiator is that our production technology along with the know-how, gives us great control over the process to create consistent and high quality biochar for specific purposes. Our technology is low capex and easily scalable. We can create biochar for specific applications at a commercial scale. We don't need to take the whole market to be successful. I am confident that we will be able to carve out our niche in the biochar market. For a lower capex than other production technologies we can pay back the cost of this facility in less than 5 years at the current market price of biochar. We will reach more efficiencies as we scale up our production units. This is one of the few market driven climate change solutions. I would like to hear more details on the concerns over "cost and timeline", maybe I did not address this enough in the proposal. Some information is confidential and it has been challenging to spend a lot of time on the proposal. The feedback helps! It would be great to connect with those who reviewed my proposal and to hear more of your thoughts and ideas about biochar. Thank you so much! I appreciate the movement that you guys are embodying at climate co-lab. Nextchar appreciates your support. I hope to hear back from you.
All the best, |
Olawale Olaniyan Oct 21, 2017 09:01
Fellow
| Dear Kyle, I quite admire your 'sportmanship' spirit! I am sure you have been able to pick few constructive statements from the judges' comments. They will be useful for your next proposal drafts. Best wishes, Olawale |