Australia’s Clean TeQ Holdings Limited, a long-time industry leader in environmental remediation, has recently partnered with China’s largest power generator to treat waste water with its unique continuous-ion technology. This technology also allows Clean TeQ to extract metals from minerals and industrial waste, but as Clean TeQ Chairman Sam Riggall explains in this interview with The Gold Report, the company is also on track to open the world’s first standalone scandium mine and has already inked collaboration agreements with the end users that will use this currently rare metal to make aluminum lighter and stronger.
The Gold Report: Clean TeQ Holdings Limited (CLQ:ASX) was founded in 1990 as an air-purification business; a quarter-century later it’s now in the water purification and metals business. Tell us about the evolution of your company.
Sam Riggall: By 2000, Clean TeQ had become Australia’s largest air-treatment company for biological odor control. The company then looked to expand its technology base. It identified very promising technologies around ion exchange and moved to license them. The next decade was devoted to developing, modifying and improving our proprietary continuous-ion exchange process and applying it to those industries where it demonstrates the greatest value.
TGR: You’re no longer in the air purification business?
SR: Even though this was Clean TeQ’s sole revenue-generating business, we sold it earlier this year for around AU$2 million (~AU$2M) with an arrangement for future payments contingent on future performance. The problem was that its business model was cost-plus-margin in a quite competitive industry. We decided that our resources and capital were better directed to the core technology of continuous-ion exchange. So, we are now focused on water treatment and metals recovery.
TGR: Tell us about your history in business.
SR: My career has been spent mostly in the mining sector. I worked for the Rio …read more