Manny Anton: Hello, I'm Manny Anton from the Finance News Network and today we welcome back Dotz Nano. Dotz Nano has the ASX code DTZ and currently has a market capitalization of approximately $85 million. Dotz is a nanotechnology firm pioneering innovative climate and industrial nanotechnologies. The company's primary focus lies in developing revolutionary carbon dioxide management technologies paving the way towards a carbon neutral future. Joining us today is Dotz Nano, CEO, Sharon Malka. Sharon, welcome back to the network.

Sharon Malka: Thank you very much and thank you for hosting me again.

Manny Anton: Always a pleasure. Okay, well why don't we start with the company's recent announcement on the completion of construction of a bench scale unit. How important is this?

Sharon Malka: We are very thrilled with this achievement because it marks a significant progress in the development stage of our technology, Dotz Earth. It enable us to demonstrate the effectiveness of the technology and now we will be focused on scaling it up and develop the technology towards the next stage of development.

Manny Anton: Excellent. And when you did announce this, you also announced that it was done ahead of schedule, which is a pretty good achievement these days. How did you manage to deliver that?

Sharon Malka: The way we did it, I think it's based on the strategic collaboration we have with SINTEF and the dedication of the R&D team. We always like to perform what we did and do what we tell and this is exactly what we did and what we plan to do moving forward. Our collaboration with SINTEF enable us to leverage the experience and the knowledge of SINTEF in this industry and in those technology and the collaboration and the joint efforts of our R&D team with the SINTEF R&D team enable us to meet our goals earlier.

Manny Anton: Okay. And just for the benefit of our investors, can you tell us a little bit about SINTEF? They're obviously quite important in this space.

Sharon Malka: Sure. They are quite important in this space, generally speaking and for us are very important. SINTEF is one of the largest CRO for climate technology worldwide. They are based in Norway. They are running multiple projects with most of the industry in multiple technology for climate and carbon capture. And this is the main reason for having this strategic collaboration in place to support our development plan and to enable us to move forward quicker than others.

Manny Anton: All right. So they're a globally important presence.

Sharon Malka: A large CRO worldwide for CCS technologies.

Manny Anton: Great. Okay. Just moving back to the bench unit, you also said you had some very positive feedback coming from that initial commencement. Is there any update on how that testing is going? Are you seeing the same favourable results coming through or data?

Sharon Malka: Correct. And you're totally right. First of all, we do have now the demonstration unit that enable us to confirm the effectiveness of our technology. But more importantly, once we have this done, we done some validation testing and process simulations runs conducted by SINTEF, and those testing demonstrated the enhanced performance of our sorbents. And what are those performance? One, increased absorption capacity, which is important, actually three times higher than a commercial sorbent. The second one is improved selectivity compared to nitrogen and the third one is lower energy requirement. Those results enable us to say and to demonstrate that we can drive down the cost of capture of CO2 moving forward.

Manny Anton: Great. Okay. Just to wrap it up a little bit, what are the next steps for the company and what news flow can we expect in the short term?

Sharon Malka: Our number one priority goal is to demonstrate the technology at scale. And now we are focusing and commenced already the design and construction of a small scale unit to demonstrate this technology at the larger scale together with SINTEF and collaboration with SINTEF. This is our key focus and I hope that we will achieve this milestone towards the end of 2024. Other than that, we continue discussions with potential partners for Dotz Earth to collaborate with industrial emitters and engineering companies. And if we take back to our original technology, Dotz Shield, we are in advanced discussion with commercial partners and I believe that we will be able to secure commercial agreement toward mid-year 2024.

Manny Anton: All right, well Sharon, thank you for your time today. It's been great having you back as always and we look forward to getting you back and hearing about the progress.

Sharon Malka: Thank you very much for hosting me again.

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