Universal Matter Completes Acquisition of Applied Graphene Materials Main Operating Businesses

Universal Matter UK Limited (“UM UK”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Universal Matter Inc., has acquired all shares of Applied Graphene Materials UK Limited (“AGM UK”) and Applied Graphene Materials LLC (“AGM US”), the main operating subsidiaries of Applied Graphene Materials plc on March 28, 2023, for a total consideration of US$1.3M. The sale and purchase agreements relating to this transaction were signed on February 21, 2023, and UK NSI Act approval was received on March 24, 2023.Universal Matter Inc. (UMI), a privately held Canadian Corporation, was formed in July 2019. UMI is a high-tech advanced materials company seeking to create strong circular economies by upcycling a range of carbon-based materials, including waste streams, to manufacture and supply high quality and sustainable turbostratic graphene (TG). UMI’s proprietary Flash Joule Heating (FJH) process can uniquely transform a wide variety of carbon-containing feedstocks into high value graphene materials using its highly efficient and low-cost manufacturing process. UMI’s unique pathway for producing graphene is strongly protected by background IP and trade secrets that the company has built up during the last three years. UMI operates its Innovation Centers in Mississauga ON and Houston TX; the company has recently acquired an 18,000 square foot building in Burlington ON for housing its Demonstration Plant. The Demonstration Plant is expected to be operational in the 3^rd quarter of 2023 with a nameplate capacity of ~1t/day at full utilization. The combination of feedstock flexibility and the FJH process technology can produce tuneable graphene products with a wide range of physical properties. This is instrumental in providing performance benefits across diverse end-use applications.

John van Leeuwen, CEO of Universal Matter, noted, “The acquisition of AGM fits exceptionally well with UMI’s growth strategy by significantly enhancing our dispersion and application capabilities for advanced paints and coatings. Moreover, it will provide UMI with an important European footprint for strengthening our growth potential.”

AGM’s (UM UK) market leading product technologies have been designed to deliver next generation performance requirements for protective industrial coatings and other applications. This includes graphene dispersion technologies, application and formulating know-how, and compelling test results to support market adoption in coatings, composites and beyond. In addition, AGM’s (UM UK) dispersion solutions are easy and safe to use in industrial settings, and have appropriate regulatory approvals for volume deployment. AGM’s (UM UK) platform dispersion technology will be further leveraged to enable the deployment of graphene materials into many of the strategic market segments that UMI is pursuing. AGM’s (UM UK) strong pipeline of ongoing customer engagements for evaluating its products and technologies will significantly accelerate UMI’s overall product/market adoption strategies.

The combined capabilities enabled by this acquisition will provide an outstanding opportunity for accelerating the growth of novel graphene-based solutions by utilizing UMI’s proprietary graphene capabilities and AGM’s (UM UK) dispersion platform technologies. This synergistic combination will also help create a compelling value proposition for many industries by further capitalizing on UMI’s unique FJH process for upcycling carbon waste into high-performance, sustainable graphene solutions.

Closure of the acquisition was completed concurrently with the start of the European Coating Show in Nurnberg Germany March 28-30, 2023. AGM (UM UK) exhibited and presented two technical papers at the conference: Beyond the performance of traditional corrosion protective pigments: A comparative study and Use of graphene nanoplatelets to enhance chemical resistance.