 And I'd love to welcome everybody back to the Independent Investor here. We are kicking off 2023 with a bang. This is the first exclusive interview we have with the Co-Founder CEO of Aduro Clean Technologies, Mr. Ofer Vaikus. He has been kind enough to parlay from his busy schedule and speak directly to the developments that are going on right now and they are exciting and they are vast. I want to take this opportunity to invite everybody to the description finding all the information for adurocleantech.com. Disclaimers and disclosures as well as my current share position will be disclosed in the description for full transparency. Please use these resources in understanding how we all have a responsibility in getting on board with what Aduro Clean Technologies brings to bear. Ofer, welcome to the channel. Please take a quick moment here and give us a quick rundown of the history of aduro and really the passion that drives what it is that you're trying to bring to the marketplace here in trying to solve the plastic problem. Certainly. Hi, Ryan. Thank you very much for having me and it's always an honor to speak out with investors. We are actually looking forward to do that. We want the opportunity to show our voice and explain our case and so yes, it's an honor but also a great opportunity to be here and thank you very much for doing that. As for the history of aduro and the passion behind it, its aduro's idea was found somewhere in 2009 much before it was conceived when I found this technology that came from Alberta and it wasn't entirely our technology, it was a nearby technology. I show it at the time to my partner today, my partner in crime, the city of the city of Marcus. The immediate question that he came back and asked is you know that whatever they do and everyone looks at it, it doesn't really happen. So I got intrigued and I said, hold on, what do you mean by that? He said, I just don't know why nobody else is reading the science the way I read it and so at that moment we pose and we took about three years to investigate quietly what's going on with the chemistry that we are promoting and it was a little bit like an onion case where you learn through your motion what's going on there. What we understood is basically that when you are promoting the chemistry that we think people thought that they are promoting, there are certain things that where they're hidden and nobody pay attention to that and so when you look at the articles and everything around the articles, the publications and the efforts to do pilots, everyone explained this in a certain way that to support some kind of chemistry that actually did not happen and at the fundamental basically when you take water and press it into a supercritical condition, it remains a supercritical condition unless you introduce foreign material and once you introduce foreign material, of course the environment is changing and water no longer has the same characteristic because you just introduced and most of the research to our surprise where continue with the supercritical condition and we've been immediately understood that we're working below that kind of open for us what I called a positive Pandora box where we looked at information, we had the opportunity to quietly look secretly at what the publications are, we realized what's going on there and then we thought okay we have to understand it a little bit and be able to develop it and understand exactly what's going on so that's for the history, fast forward into it we started with heavy oil and we realized that we could do some things in the heavy oil at the time we based our first patent to our surprise in a place where every the first patent that we found on record was 1930 and so there was a lot of players in the market at the time, all the big boys have been there, all the big companies have been there our patent with our first 36 claim which is quite a lot, sailed through and we were among the 10% of this audience, the examiner did not find any reason to push back and that was a big wake up moment because we thought okay there is some kind of a novelty that nobody else is putting and looking around and then we moved to investigate, we realized that we fast forward a few years, we realized we have to do some work on renewable oils and there is correlation between those technicians and from bitumen to renewable oil and I'll explain later what was the connection I'll just say that we've been ready to produce more patents and then we realized basically that there is a similarity basically between the bitumen and what's going on in renewable and bitumen in plastic and so what we did basically is took our knowledge from bitumen and renewable and just you know attack the plastic stage so the net result was eight patents in less than 10 years, seven of them are ours and are granted, one of them is pending and a lot of know-how, new science that came out that is really novel and hasn't been done before the way we are promoting it. Now just recently the third party verification that was provided for the technology what did that mean in way of verifying what it is that you guys had been working so hard over the last decade to get to this point? Yeah so you know in our hearts we knew of course but we needed the investors because the investors have heard a lot of stories before and you had to go somewhere outside and make sure that you are presenting the chemistry in such way that it's been confirmed that the science is there and I'll say that there is two level there that one maybe is more important than the other when we started it we said yeah we'll just produce a third party report which was at the time was in our professor that we've been working at the Western University but really Ryan the third party validation comes later from the operators and the potential partners that has been asking us many many hard questions you know lots of them and you have to protect and tell the same story again and again and again and you know we don't put it out there because we only produce in the news we only put out the news of actually material in that sense and we don't talk about you know engagement where we have with other possible partners we have a lot of those but we don't talk about them because it's not a deal until it's a deal and we really want to try from anything of you know the push kind of activity that maybe sometimes you could be mistaken to do of course these guys are pushing back left right and center and so we've been confident in our ability to do and to protect the the science behind it and for us what's remain is really beyond that was really to put it into the motion of moving it from the lab towards a commercial application so taking the science and wrapping it up and building a commercial process around it because there's no questions about the fact that the science is happening it is happening and I have to ask about the shell game changer program yeah the accelerator program it's in the share owner's best interest to get what it is that you can disclose I know you're in the process of you know the beginning stages of marching through 2023 with with shell being chosen in the game changer program yeah I want you to kind of speak a little bit generally to the share owners about what this could potentially mean for the aduro opportunity and more importantly we all know and we sit back a little bit and we identify how big this plastic problem is we're talking about in the neighborhood of 325 million tons produced annually we've got current technologies that are running at about 50 to 60 recovery efficiency and we've got you guys here now that really have had one of the most large validation that I've seen in in this market that that that has come about what is that going to mean in accelerating your guys's path to bringing this product to market and starting to really get this product in the in the hands of where it needs to be in solving the problem that we have thank you for you know asking it I mean it's of course it's critically important for us I'll start by saying actually I've been reserving and say we can only say about shell whatever there is in the market I think personally for me there is two levels of what does it mean for aduro the first is that you know Shell has been investigating the technology and you know in my heart I knew but the fact that we've been granted an access to talk to Shell this is the second largest company in the world I mean it's a huge honor and for us you know to be part of of and communicate with experts at Shell in general I mean lots of good stuff could come out of it you can of course imagine it and start thinking yeah what can be done with this so very very exciting so on the level of authentication or maybe acknowledging that the science is there that that is maybe the first element you know that of course Shell has the program has opened the door for us to work maybe on we develop it in in six phases and with each phase we're moving forward we show some things then we move forward and we show first some things and you know as we move into the the project we we advance our operation based on feedback that we have from Shell and by Shell's expert and Shell has a beyond that program Shell has a you know with the aduro a commercial agreement but it's it's it's confidential and I don't want to want to be very very careful and we want to honor Shell we don't want to be over you know promoting on this we just want to be reserved on one hand but we want to make sure that we are delivering to the letter at which this is what we intend to do as a company we are so hungry to this success the team is ready we have excellent team that is working 24-7 they've stayed so for so long in the company for this opportunity to show it to people such as Shell and so you can't imagine I mean there is of course now they have to you know they have to work for it right now and prove it but you can appreciate the level of excitement that that we have when we're doing it within Shell there is a bunch of experts that can help us and every feeder that we are getting help us shape our understanding both on the commercial side and and back on the technology so these multiple advantages for us working with Shell. Fantastic for the viewers that don't understand the Game Changer program I will put a link in the description to the one public announcement that aduro had in being accepted late last year 2022 just sets up 2023 is one of those many things to to observe for 2023 yeah go ahead perspective Ryan sorry to to mention certain volumes you know that out there in millions of tons you know the the plastic program is so big that you need 10 shells to to make a dent just if you really want to to this endless amount of volume there just to give some some understanding to the public what does it mean Shell really wants to to process about a million I think a million tons per year I think it's by 2030 well you just mentioned 340 of them so how many shells do you need to deal with the plastic problem so it's about working in many areas and with different collaborators to try and make a dent on a story that is definitely sensitive and and you know to all of us right we all get emotion about it in one way or the other I think for me I felt a little bit disappointed in myself when I started doing my due diligence on this topic in understanding that my understanding of recycling when it left my household as much as we all consume on a daily basis what actually was the end disposition there wasn't a cradle to grave it was really a generation to either the landfills or the oceans and it was my understanding that when it went in the green box that it went to actually be disposed of recycled and turned into new material that is that is not the the case and I think a lot of people are naive to and don't truly understand the magnitude of the problem and up till now the lack of technology that it goes into solving this problem can you speak a little bit about the efficiency and the cost and your technology which is hydrochemical and how it separates you guys from the competition in these companies that are trying to bring solutions to bear in the early stages of this of this initiative yeah so I'll start by saying that we we feel a lot not just about the competition we feel that we can work you know with the competition not just against the competition of course the competition for many many years you know there were several approaches been developed over the years to deal with with with recycling of plastic one of them being the mechanical which is the straightforward approach the other one being more of a solvent where you put some material in some kind of a liquid and you get something then the other one the the higher level would be more of the thermal approach which you're basically breaking breaking material and you can associate the thermal approach with you know there are some water-based technologies and hydrothermal liquidification and their pyrolysis and then there is higher level like gasification that you simply destroying things and bringing them back so overall it's accepting waste in general is really really tough because you're talking about different type of chemicals that are coming into the same pot and and they react to the same condition differently and so why you know no surprise if you put them in certain temperature you know some things will be you will behave x and the other things will behave y and these penalties associate with that and now what you see against it is that you know before in order to come up with a valuable some kind of a reasonable product you would have to maybe do some higher level post or pre-processing treatment so sorting and if because you've done your work let's say if you've done it to a certain level it's not enough and you have to do some post-processing at the later state now now you can see that you know this is a material basically plastic is very cheap it's everywhere and anywhere and so the minute you touch it you start accumulating negative cost but it comes immediately with the fact to to the reality that you have to you know collect it and sort it and do all kind of things with it of course it's easier to turn you know put it on on some kind of a fire or throw it into the landfill yeah that is the reality in general just because it's very very complex problem i'll differentiate also between areas that are more regulated and areas that are not regulated so i'm happy you're you're putting your material in the blue box in the bins and you think all is good we'll talk about that in a minute but we're not you know the center of the world the rest of the world you know we think most of the population out there it's not what what is happening you know you're talking about latin america and you talk about india and you talk about other areas that as much as they want there's lack of resources to do that type of operation and the operation that you're talking about like the blue being are more in the you know more advanced countries and so we are we seeing a differentiation there and so for example a lot of the plastic program you know remains the same in those countries and nothing happens there so in a way for us it's a market and i'll explain why is it a market uh going back to to the you know our our reality where you're saying i'm putting it in the plastic bin and i'm doing something with it um soon enough because the situation is so complex uh you start accumulating costs so in this environment the one that can work in a little bit less temperature the one that can work in you know take a little bit more contaminating the technology that can do higher yield and maybe that is obviously the technology that will be cheaper and has a higher chances to survive what's going on in our reality and what's going on in our reality is basically that uh competing processes has to go for size you know so they put build large and larger and larger and larger site but that's in in return create uh commitment and demand for waste uh for many years to come in in you know large radios that in return increase the value of the feedstock yeah and so you know this is a rolling uh stone that goes push you up more and more and more and by the way there's a lot of rejection as you mentioned so for example with those guys that are fighting for the for the best of the best of the material that is out there and rejecting a lot because aduro can work in the environment that has a little bit more contaminated material we see ourselves as complimentary to those you know we don't have to replace them we see yourself as as complimentary aduro can operate in a smaller scale unit closer to the resource or to the area where uh your your waste is there and so if i'll take you now to the less regulatory environment let's say nexico for now then of course smaller unit that closer to the edge or where the the the feedstock is there that create activity and higher value product while reducing the negative cost of transportation and everything that associated with the emission and footprint has a chance to become sustainable there without building multi-billion dollar operation so aduro is benefiting from both sides one in the higher regulator we absolutely you know we can compete and will be more efficient in many ways from the legacy technologies we see but we actually want to work with them and and the market will adjust itself and we'll take material that they they are rejecting and you know there'll be maybe higher recycling activity in that sense and with the market that is actually fairly open and not a lot of penetration is happening and you can look and into the charts and and see where are the big companies are operating they are more operating in north america in europe less operating in latin america in india although it's coming there our solution provided an opportunity to to do smaller operation a more localized operation and now you're talking about you know things that associate with esg because you are creating work and you're creating you know you're helping cleaning the land there's so much good stuff that goes on in this that you know you just don't want to stop and so for us it's just another secondary market and we are actively developing both so although we're getting attention from big organizations and such as shell we're actually pursuing smaller opportunities to sustain ourselves to understand how does it looks in in such a remote market because we want to learn that we want to create a it will create benefit you know monetary benefit for the investors but it's also create a greater good because you know you can operate in those organizations and this is what absolutely right working with everyone to create some kind of a good things out of it that's that's incredible um i i want to i want to switch a little bit and talk about pending mandates and i i don't necessarily like that word i i think that um in in what i've researched there a lot of these large companies know that there is going to be a cap on historical production and new production they're going to have to find out a different way to do business these mandates are looming 2025 is right around the corner how much in your sense does that play into the the the search right now that these large companies are on or is it a healthy mix of both knowing that they need to move in a different direction or is it a healthy mix of both can you speak on that a little bit over yeah i i think first of all it's it's health mandate by itself it's a it's healthy but it needs to be measured and the future of it it's very very very new at the end of the day you know those those costs will somehow trickle down into the product and you'll see a higher cost into it but what you know already what we know already that you know even if we let's say pay cheaper product then but then we eat fish with plastic product in it it may not be a good idea if you know what i mean so there's a balance there that needs to be you know to be handled the consumer or the regulation behind the mandate are such that produce the responsibility are such that organization that are producing let's say product and are responsible to to distribute those products into the to the to the consumer are taking some responsibility to aggregate and collect them and to find them another house and so there is a different it's not it's not one for all the concept is is is this you know distributing and and increasingly expanding even to territory such india and mexico by the way for you to know but it's it's deviate based on case by case but in in general what it means is you know in the case let's say of loblo and coca cola and others that are producing a lot of food packaging they will pay some fees membership fees to a non-profit organization that will be responsible to not just engage with the other organization to collect that type of product right also will engage with companies like us to find them a better better alternative than just incinerating so it is absolutely helping us in many ways on the other hand i can tell you aduro because aduro can work in in more of a there is a a little bit higher freedom to do it to work in in the you know the contamination material i feel that we are enjoying a bit of a both world whatever regulation will be there i think will be awesome and will be there and whatever non-regulation will be there we'll just you know we're trying to make money without the government right every time you you're negotiating and hoping that the government you'll make money with the government okay it may be true but we want to make money without the government and so in our business case we have models for both and i think aduro will benefit usually from that regulatory that are coming in i agree i i think now more than ever in 2023 i have seen a an initial focus especially from the younger generation of investors who put esg acknowledgement and the governance that exists around those companies like yourself that have these initiatives where it's it's much bigger than the stock ownership it's it's a lot about acknowledging the initiative that those companies are putting forward to reduce greenhouse emissions to lower working to lower those carbon scores for companies and really looking to to find that that that initiative it's not just about investing in companies anymore that are profitable it is really a renewed focus and understanding and people are making their investment decisions based on that that esg acknowledgement i do want to this is important and i have to say from time to time i do see positive news that are coming in about about you know us we we often are buried in our own world and are busy in our own things but you know i i saw on link deal today and advertising about you know great rift in australia that is has more curl like there are some positive impact that is happening although we don't see it sometimes the problem is so big that we don't see the end of it and that's generally the case i guess and it's very frightening and and what have you you know that those are the issues but uh you you can see that sometimes there is positivity that comes out of it we're definitely part of those technologies that i call the next generation at technologies that are capable of doing something in a maybe in a better form or less less impact and i'll say it again it maybe you know one day it will replace some technologies but often what you find out that you just work nearby and there is a deviation and you just collaborate and you make a lot of money do that and that's fine as well that's great the the plastic problem has compounded itself over many many decades and i think it's safe to say that the problem is not going to be solved overnight and and no my charge to aduro is take take whatever time you need i i know if we could have this tomorrow we could take it because the planet needs this tomorrow we'll do it trust me we've been the planet longing to to show it out and expand it yeah i think people if they would just increase their little bit of knowledge and to the magnitude of this problem i think they would be rooting for you the irrespective of whether or not they were a share owner in the company or not i i think that's true as we round out the interview here i do want to ask you about r2 that's been or completing if not completed now and doing the testing phase yeah fantastic what is that going to mean for customer engagements going into 2023 and over so let's say 10 years until today laboratory equipment so you know pots and pans and cooking and so people would ask you yeah what is this can you make a commercial product out of it so r2 is really the first time and it's not won't be the same reactor we already know that we have to change some things but it's the first time that you're thinking continuously so so this is a motivation so it becomes a lesser science experiment and now you're moving to the bigger deal and there's no way around it we have to go through the motion of building you know tackling small stuff and then going into maybe medium-sized stuff and then building bigger stuff that's what you know in every in a general in a journey of commercialization of a technology you have to go through those stages and you would be really you'll make a big mistake if you'll jump from one to the other thinking that you save money there's plenty of dead bodies all over ryan i can take you to alberta and i'll show you some of them if you like and basically because of that in the other end of it that sometimes people go to the safe so whatever it is out there like pyrolysis and the others and so we have to be very very careful in in the way you are you are moving through those stages the net result is that us running a continuous flow material process will teach us a lot about the possibility and what is required to do to move it from this current stage to a commercial project the optimism behind you know or the positive thoughts behind the fact that we think we can do it really really quickly is again embedded in the technologies benefit so if we're working in lower temperature if we're working with the higher level of contamination if we're producing you know higher yield we're doing more good things than bad things so we have less problem to solve yeah that's the concept it's not that we think we can jump to a commercial process immediately but we have this sense that if we're doing things right you can move it through the journey we haven't seen anything right now that tells us no it's always possibility it's a new science it's a new research trying we are yeah we're developing our own history right now there's no book about the things that we're doing there's a lot of book about everything else something you know everything you know gasification pyrolysis i do thermal liquidification whatever you want there's books and books and books you can find them you can do it you can google or you can develop some kind of improvement for us every step that we're taking is novel is novel yeah it's create a lot of interest and of course on this journey you have to move through the motion and and just do r2 and then r3 which is a bigger it's a ton per day so r2 is a few kilos per hour r3 will be uh two tons per day and we're even thinking now dare to think even you know larger units 20 tons a day which is becoming a you know a commercial like but it's just the thinking now right now our focus is just to commission and run uh the r2 because that is the milestone that we have we have to do in the next few months fantastic as we wrap it down i want to invite everybody who has stayed with us through the totality of the interview to visit a duro clean tech dot com there is too much to unpack with the duro clean technologies there are two other verticals that we didn't even discuss this evening we touched on them a little bit if you want to understand more i highly please yep wait please don't be a stranger because i tell you what uh it's going to be very exciting uh as we march into 2023 and beyond to really track your guys's progress i think the world um is rooting for you and i think for the most part the intention behind providing this awareness is to introduce what you guys are bringing to bear i i'm i'm passionate about it um i have been right now right i first of all thank you very much i mean i i just want to thank uh on behalf of my team that is working around i mean thank you for for the opportunity and thank you for the investors that actually put the trust in us and let us do what we do uh we're absolutely committed to uh deliver it you know through this uh journey and to bring it into a uh safe shore we feel we can do it and so far in 2022 we we talked about 2022 as maybe building the building blocks so giving the companies those tools such as the bitumen unit the flash drum that we needed building a bigger a bigger uh uh laboratory and and commissioning the the r2 or building the r2 2023 in our case is the integration of those building blocks in other words running those unit bringing it to to the stage where we can engage customers developing projects with those customers those customers needs to see this um through the r2 and going forward in order to understand how to integrate that going for you know in in there on their sides and as i mentioned there are small project and large project and so it's very bubbly and you have to learn a lot of information but anyway that that's kind of uh uh for us 2023 will be just the integration of those building blocks absolutely i'm expecting the investors to see going forward from us absolutely we'll be patiently waiting for those updates as they become available over on behalf of the channel here you heard it here in 2023 i don't know how we're going to top this but we are just getting started in 2023 looking for really really a brighter future here it's been pretty rough markets the last couple of years but there are pockets of value uh and it um it bright it shines no brighter than with aduro clean technology zoe for vicus co-founder ceo of aduro clean technologies thank you so much sir for coming on the channel we really appreciate your time thank you very much wine and happy new year to everyone same to you all for taking easy bye bye