I would like to give a shout-out to Jeremy as I had an absolute blast visiting with him about Freyr Battery and their new U.S. division. My first interview with Tom Jensen, while he was at the headquarters in Norway, was an eye-opener. While we understand that renewables and a weak grid require storage for stabilization, I have not been a big fan due to the impact of the huge batteries on the environment as they are disposed of. Well, the new technology developed by Freyr Battery has fixed one of my biggest concerns, and in fact, almost every objection I have to large storage projects, Tom was able to address.
So it made sense that we got an update from Jeremy as the new president of U.S. Operations. I mean it was a blast, as we got some great updates on the huge job numbers in the U.S., the use of the IRA, and coordinating investors for the U.S. market as well.
As Freyr continues down the right road, please watch their new technology as they remain nimble enough to make the changes for the good of the environment and good-paying jobs.
Thank you Jeremy for stopping by the podcast. Please let me know if you have any updates in the future that we need to know about. – Stu
Please follow Jeremy Bezdek on his LinkedIn HERE.
For more information on Freyr Battery HERE:
For Tom Jenson’s Interview HERE:
Other great news : FREYR accelerates US gigafactory plans amidst KKR investment reports
00:00 – Intro
00:50 – Talks about Jeremy Bezdek`s Promotion and a little background about him
01:33 – Tell us about the new plant that you’re raising money for tell us about what’s going on there
04:11 – Talks about Freyr being able to recycle Batteries
06:27 – Reusing what you got is kind of important for cost saving for investors.
08:22 – The importance of the I.R.A. in looking at the storage to help offset that is what brought Freyr to the U.S.? Or what prompted Norway to get interested in the U.S. storage market?
11:23 – How is the storage house for taking a look at energy security from either physical or even cyber-attacks? What do you guys got going on on the security front?
13:43 – As an investor looking at storage, does the way the financial market in the U.S. for electric generation to consumers make it more attractive to battery storage?
16:08 – Talks about energy storage and the importance of having a battery system as an insurance measure for ensuring a balanced and reliable energy supply.
19:14 – How many years is an ROI on a storage unit if you’re paying X number cents less on something like that when you’re out there as the president of the U.S. for Freyr, do you get the ROI calculations out and get your crayon and your finance going there?
21:49 – Do you guys have some stuff coming around the corner?
25:18 – Talks about the Financial aspects on looking for investors and the tax advantage which is critical
27:51 – So if there were 38 whatever site you had, what was the worst hotel you had to stay in while you were traveling around?
29:57 – What is the first for the next quarter? What are your targets again for next year?
32:15 – How are you going to be directed at the rest of the world? Because we talk to the U.S. Where are you going in the rest of the world with all this?
34:36 – How do people get a hold of you?
36:47 – Outro
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ENB – Jeremy Bezdek Freyr Battery.mp4
Stuart Turley [00:00:03] Hello Everybody, Today is just a fantastic day because I get to do what I love doing I get to talk to industry experts. Today is no exception, My name’s Stuart Turley, president and CEO of the Sandstone Group.
Stuart Turley [00:00:18] And we’ve got a fantastic guest here we’ve got Jeremy Bestwick and I mean, he is with Freyer Battery out of Norway he is new to fry battery as of, I believe, January. Now, Freyer Battery is one of my got a lot of my hot buttons is a check box. I’ve been fortunate enough to interview Tom the CEO and we are going to have a fabulous update from Fryer Battery.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:00:46] Welcome Jeremy is to appreciate you having me.
Stuart Turley [00:00:50] Oh, I’ll tell you what, congratulations on your new position. So you got that in January, huh?
Jeremy Bezdek [00:00:56] Yeah. So I had I had actually been at Koch Industries for 26 years prior to that and in the last couple of years leading the energy transition vertical for them and it.KOCH we invested in prayer.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:01:11] So I had led that investment and then and then actually joined the board of Freyr for 18 months prior to coming on board with them as president of the US business. So still doing pretty well but yeah, I started as an employee since January and it just hit the ground absolutely sprinting, so.
Stuart Turley [00:01:29] Oh, I bet and so we got so much to cover. Tell us about the new plant that you’re raising money for tell us about what’s going on there, because that’s exciting.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:01:40] Yeah, no, it is exciting. And this really started almost two years ago now when after Koch had made the investment in Preyer, came to me and said, hey, we want to build a facility in the US and we’d love to have your help doing that.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:01:55] And so we got some resources, some folks who could help with that and we went through a very detailed site selection process and ended up with a great site in Georgia it’s about 30 miles south of the airport there, South of Atlanta.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:02:11] And it’s it’s a great site for a lot of reasons but, you know, the battery belt, so to speak, is really developing in the southeastern U.S. I mean, you see it with a lot of different announcements. A lot of different folks are building not only battery facilities but electric vehicle facilities. And so we like that location and we actually purchased the property in November of 22.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:02:35] And when I came on board in January, the first thing Tom said to me was, now that the IRA is in place, which of course when they would for wanted to pursue a U.S. plant, this was pre IRA. But once the IRA was in place, his whole point to me was we’ve got to accelerate this, we’ve got to move faster on our original plan was to have a plant would start up production in the summer of 2026.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:02:57] And, and then what we’ve done over the last six months is really tried to accelerate that with what we call a fast track project where we could do a slightly smaller facility, a couple of lines of battery cell production and have it start up in summer of 25.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:03:12] So we’ve saved a year on that and so we are out right now in a in a fundraising process. We’ve got a large number of both financial type sponsors as well as our strategic partners that are all evaluating how they may want to participate in this fundraising and that we’re moving forward on it’s a lot of fun and pretty exciting.
Stuart Turley [00:03:34] I’ll tell you, when you sit back and kind of go, and I’ve been calling it Fryer Battery, but that puts me in Texas, you know, So it’s rare. How do you pronounce it?
Jeremy Bezdek [00:03:46] Pronounce it? Freyr Battery.
Stuart Turley [00:03:47] Yes, Freyer Battery.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:03:49] It is okay. It is tricky to do because our our actual ticker is Frey F-R-E-Y.
Stuart Turley [00:03:55] Okay.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:03:57] Frec is, of course, the name of the company.
Stuart Turley [00:03:59] Okay, cool. But as we sit back and and we take a look at either ERCOT and the energy transition storage is really going to be a big deal. I mean, is it is very much necessary. But one of my big hot buttons is renewable batteries and Freyer. Prayer, Friar Tuck Freyer has the renewal, the recyclable batteries. Yeah. No.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:04:28] Yeah. No, I think there’s a couple of things here too, to really comment on and the first is that, yes, as a, as more intermittent type generation comes into play, which you see with wind and solar and you know, the cost of wind and solar generation has come down so significantly that it solve problems that intermittency create for the grid you need battery storage and that’s that’s what solves the problem.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:04:50] And now what you’re seeing is dramatic drops in the cost of batteries. And so now you’re getting to this point where it’s a it’s quite economical to see, you know, renewable generation full with battery storage really becoming baseline type generation for utility districts all over the country and ERCOT being one of the large ones in Texas it is it is absolutely something that we think we can help.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:05:21] Our 24 m technology to your point Stu is really made for not only low lower carbon footprint battery cells because of the type of technology it is, it’s a lot less complex than conventional technology, a lot less processed steps, much friendlier from a power consumption and water consumption standpoint.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:05:45] And then the ability, of course, of taking those cells and then going through recycling and then reusing battery materials that have been done through a cell once and now come out. It’s just as good as they went in and ready to be used in a new cell. And so we have recycling efforts that we will be putting in place with our production that enable us to really capture that sort of reuse capability for for the energy storage market.
Stuart Turley [00:06:13] I tell you, that to me is one of the most critical things when we talk about the supply line. We have you know, you have so many of your rearers in critical earth minerals around the world. Reusing what you got is kind of important for a cost saving for investors, don’t you think?
Jeremy Bezdek [00:06:33] Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, we will be at least initially utilizing what’s called LFP chemistry, so lithium ion phosphate batteries. And there’s a little less sort of rare critical elements in the LFP battery versus an NMC battery with you don’t have any cobalt, you don’t have any nickel in the LFP battery.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:06:54] So you’re a little bit advantaged already but even then, the ability to to go through a battery life and then be able to pull out the materials that went into that initial battery and be able to re utilize those, that’s a huge win.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:07:10] And now, of course, Freyer is not we didn’t invent recycling there’s a lot of people that are evaluating it but our technology does lend itself to much easier recycling. We’re pretty excited about our ability to do that as we scale up.
Stuart Turley [00:07:24] Well, I tell you, Jeremy, I have talked to other storage companies and everything else, and none of them are touting that or encouraging it like Tom and you are doing. So, you know, hats off because you’re hitting my big hot button on that bad dog.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:07:39] Now I think part of it, too, is to the extent that you can create cleaner batteries from the get go.
Stuart Turley [00:07:48] Right.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:07:48] We focused on, obviously in Norway, where we’re building our facility in there, uses 100% renewable hydropower in Georgia, working with the local utilities. And they already have their plans to continue to increase their renewable percentages of generation. But we want to encourage them to do that and support them with projects as well. So we are lowering the initial footprint of the battery, but then being able to use recycled materials it’s a huge win.
Stuart Turley [00:08:19] Oh, that is that is just fantastic. Now, the importance of the I.R.A. in taking a look at the storage to help offset that is that what brought Freyer to the U.S.? Or What what prompted Norway to get interested in the U.S. storage market?
Stuart Turley [00:08:41] Because, I mean, don’t you have an Arctic plant coming in? Really? You just announced one. I think this this past week I saw an announcement, whatever that was but anyway, sorry, that was almost two questions there.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:08:55] I’ll cover I’ll cover it all and that’s fine. So so announcement we just made is we received a €100 million grant from the EU, that is for our previously announced giga Arctic facility. We’ve been working with the EU for over a year and then we just sort of passed all the checked all the boxes and received the grant so that’s exciting. And that Giga Arctic facility is still six startup production in 2025 so that’s, that’s exciting for our region colleagues.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:09:25] But back to your original question around the U.S., I mean, it was pre IRA when, when Freyr wanted to build a plant in the US and it was quite frankly because they view because we’re targeting energy storage the US would be and we think it will be the largest energy storage market in the world.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:09:46] And so being here with production was an important next step for Freyer kind of Norway. What the IRA did is it just accelerated our plans. I mean, it creates this economic incentive for producers, battery cell producers and module producers to to get in the game fast. And and it really does a lot to generate real value to the plants themselves.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:10:14] And of course, it creates, you know, increased NPV and great returns for further capital investment that we have and it’s an exciting time and quite frankly, what it does is it allows the US to build out a supply chain for battery cells that would be difficult to do without it in place.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:10:34] We’ve got to compete with the big you know, the big elephant in the room is China, obviously. I mean, they’ve been in this game for much longer than the US has they’ve created huge amounts of scale and all the supply chains there. We’ve got to go duplicate that in the IRA definitely creates incentive to help do that here in the US.
Stuart Turley [00:10:55] Well, when you talk about, you know, the energy transition and you talk about the storage, it brings up a couple of questions about security. We we haven’t talked about this before, but energy security is in a couple of different ways, keeping the grid up, which, you know, we’ve kind of alluded to with the storage, you know, having the the power not being frequent on there.
Stuart Turley [00:11:22] But how is the storage house for taking a look at energy security from either a physical or even cyber attacks? Because it was a two years ago we had the Colonial Pipeline get hacked. What do you guys got going on on the security front?
Jeremy Bezdek [00:11:42] Yeah, I would look at it a couple different place, First, let’s talk about the supply chain, because just just the ability to sort of localize and create a sustainable supply chain in the Western Hemisphere is important and that creates security right there.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:12:02] Because, number one, you’re having to buy all your raw materials from China or equipment from China that just creates risk as a you know, as associated with those materials coming from outside of the of the U.S.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:12:19] And so we are working with our supply chain partners, raw material suppliers to do two things. Number one, build out the supply chain here locally, but also then work with them on lowering their carbon footprint as it relates to the raw materials they’re producing. And we can talk about our coalition that that we’ve announced and talked about here in a second but that’s that’s one area where we’re really focusing on on the supply chain.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:12:47] As far as cybersecurity and the ability to sort of create products that that that are enabled in and not really subject to risk associated with with cybersecurity issues. You know, battery management systems is a key part of any sort of a battery energy storage solution.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:13:08] And so we’ve been very involved not only internally in how we develop our battery management systems, but working with experts in the field that creates that sort of installation security installation, not physical installation, but creates this protection around an energy storage system that will greatly mitigate any sort of risk associated with those kind of attacks.
Stuart Turley [00:13:34] You know, and and forgive me for not knowing exactly this, but that’s why I ask the questions that people know. And that is, in the U.S., we have the balancing authorities and you have the ability for standby energy. You have you know, when they’re sitting there, you have you get paid for being on standby. And that, to me, as an investor is something pretty important when you sit there in the balancing authority is sitting there.
Stuart Turley [00:14:03] Wind and solar can’t be on demand that quickly, but your storage can. So as an investor looking at storage, does the way the financial market in the U.S. for electric generation to consumers make it more attractive to battery storage? Does that make sense?
Jeremy Bezdek [00:14:25] Yes, it does. No, it does. Absolutely. It depends a little bit on which utility district you’re talking about, because the slightly different. There’s also local, state and county rules that are well known, but that differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:14:43] But generally speaking, I think you’re spot on what you’re saying is there’s an opportunity to get paid for having the ability to be on demand and that’s what a battery provides. And what you’re seeing now and this is this is just fascinating to me, but the amount of battery plus wind battery plus storage projects that are now in what’s called the interconnection queue, which is where project developers come in and said, I want to put this project in, but I have to wait to get blessed by the grid, essentially.
Stuart Turley [00:15:17] That’s right.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:15:18] Be a part of the party, if you will, with that. About 80% of the current interconnection queue in the U.S. is a wind solar battery or some combination of 80% of the interconnection queue you right now and that that’s amazing to me.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:15:36] And I think what it what it’s saying is developers utilities see the value in installing battery systems along with the renewable generation. And then, of course, the investment tax credits that are that exist now apply to batteries and that helps to it just helps the initial economics.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:15:55] But to your point, if you can get these things built and interconnected into the grid, yeah, the ability for those type of developers to get paid for having standby hour ready to go, it’s clearly there.
Stuart Turley [00:16:08] It seems to me as a if I was a balancing authority. My wife always says I’m not balanced, but if I was a energy balanced authority, it would make sense to pay for the battery at a certain rate, because even if it’s not being used or discharged, you’re still going to pay a certain rate to have that insurance sitting there. And, you know, with the rolling blackouts that are being talked about in Texas, it’s kind of important to have that little insurance there for folks.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:16:45] Well, we have we have something that I think we’ve made up this term, but energy shifting is what we call it, which is the ability to sort of utilize, you know, discharging of a battery during peak periods that have been potentially charge during off peak so that’s just there’s a math problem there that works.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:17:03] We’ve seen the U.S. market start moving more towards four hour duration storage as opposed to our duration storage and we think that is enabled this energy shifting opportunity. And and I’ll say it this way to Stu, you’re talking about really grid and utility type applications.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:17:21] But there’s a whole commercial industrial segment that is evaluating and now moving forward aggressively on adding battery storage to this from an energy shifting standpoint, if I’m a well, vertical party or if I’m an industrial facility and I can go behind the meter and really reduce my reliance on peak power.
Stuart Turley [00:17:41] Oh,.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:17:42] There’s math there, you know,.
Stuart Turley [00:17:44] Thats big man
Jeremy Bezdek [00:17:45] Yes, it is. It is. And so we’re seeing a huge sort of development in what we call CNI commercial and industrial. And so I think you’ll see battery storage at the utility scale so sort of in front of the meter utilities for everything we talked about in Buy Power Ready to Go, you’ve got the commercial industrial behind the meter market that is going to use it just from a pure economic standpoint, it makes a ton of sense. And then of course, there will be a residential market, too. And that’s that’s an exciting kind of just to think about myself as a homeowner to play in this game. I have it oil storage.
Stuart Turley [00:18:25] Tom and I were talking, we we talked about even the car market that you guys weren’t there yet, but you were possibly thinking about it with the new technology and stuff. But I love the home market from the standpoint that one of my places is out in the middle of nowhere and I I’d love to have a storage. But, you know, you sit back and it’s hooked to hydro there so, you know, it’d be kind of nice if the hydro ever quits. I’m in trouble.
Stuart Turley [00:18:52] So if you’re sitting, you’re taking a look at where the biggest, best market for fresh air is is it the home market or is it right now? From what I understand, the bigger the box you’re going to go to industrial, that’s a great market because that all of a sudden makes sense.
Stuart Turley [00:19:13] But how many years is an ROI on a storage unit if you’re if you’re paying X number cents less on something like that when you’re out there as the president of the U.S. for Freyer, do you get the ROI calculations out and get your crayon and your finance going there?
Jeremy Bezdek [00:19:32] Yeah. I mean, we you know, we’re pretty small teams still as we build out the first facility. And so everybody’s involved in a lot of these conversations, quite frankly. But that a really, really great team that we’ve hired and really sharp people that have experience in this space. We also have experience building large scale industrial facilities, which is helpful because that’s exactly what we’re going to be doing.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:19:56] Yeah, I think it’s good, you know, the opportunity for us. Yes, we have sort of not approached the the market opportunity yet simply because our technology is so fit for purpose in in the energy storage space. But but we think it is across all of the energy storage space. So whether it’s residential, this the CNI space or even at the utility scale, we will have products that we make that are available for each of those markets.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:20:25] Now, I think that I think, quite frankly, the margin profile is going to kind of move back and forth. I mean, you know, this whole energy transition space is a bit of the Wild West right now, which which creates a ton of opportunity. Right? Yeah. And I’ve got people that I think will wake up in 2030 and will look back over the decade of the twenties and said, wow, can’t believe we just went through all of that.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:20:51] Because they’ll be passive periods of of of short lists in the battery market there’ll be some periods where everybody’s got a battery and need to buy from anybody and it’s just going to be one of those kind of up and down supply and demand pictures for the better part of this decade. And and what that means is they’re margin profiles and residential versus utility will be all over the board.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:21:14] And so we need to be nimble enough to be able to really migrate to wherever there is the best return possible for us and for our shareholders. And hopefully we’ll have that capability and and really monetize that as we see the market shifting.
Stuart Turley [00:21:28] That’s pretty cool. Now, I don’t know much about the technology on this part, but the solid state batteries at Toyota that just announced that? I know that you guys got an R&D facility and they’re probably deep in a mountain in Norway somewhere, you know, buried in there, got big secret doors on it and everything. But do you guys have some stuff coming around the corner?
Jeremy Bezdek [00:21:52] So, you know, for for Freyr, the capability that we have internally is really large scale project in operating industrial facilities. And that’s if you look at the history of a lot of the folks within our company, that’s what we’ve done.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:22:11] We’ve added a ton about her experience, of course, because that is the next frontier, so to speak, and that’s where we’re going to be playing. I think you look across sort of the the newer battery technology space and there are many companies out trying to solve biggest problems related to battery constraints today. And and solid state is clearly one angle which hopes to achieve some significant not only cost savings but massive amounts of density.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:22:39] And I think, you know, the Toyota announcement talked about some massive numbers as it relates to energy density. Pretty exciting stuff for us. It’s about partnering with a lot of those newer technology providers to help them scale. So.
Stuart Turley [00:22:52] Right,.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:22:52] Tom, we have told you this previously, but I mean, we consider ourselves the industrialization partner of choice. So for a lot of these technology guys who were coming out of the pilot plants or coming out of their labs. They can’t get to scale. They need a partner like us to help them get to scale. I’ve been in the sort of investment community now for over a decade, and we saw the Valley of Death that’s where here I am. I’ve got this technology that’s ready to go, but I can’t get over the Valley of Death and create a large commercial facility that’s what Freyr is going to help these companies do.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:23:27] So while we don’t necessarily have a lot of secret sauce we’re working with internally, we are having conversations. In fact, I think at this point we’ve had very serious conversations with four different technology providers of what I would call next gen technology.
Stuart Turley [00:23:44] Nice.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:23:45] And allowing them to really build out the R&D capability, create the opportunity, and then we’ll take it and scale and and that’s how they get to market because they can’t do it on their own. So.
Stuart Turley [00:23:57] You know, the the expertise in the like in anything, you can have a product, you can have battery and you can have the connectors. But if you don’t have the PM experience, the project management, you don’t have the huge knowledge of a large scale projects going to fail. So what, Jeremy, what you just described is very critical. I mean, you know, it’s kind of like if you want it to work, you’ll buy from us. If you just want to put it in the corner, buy it from somebody else.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:24:28] We tell you when we first when I was at Coke and we first invested in Freyr and I was in my very first board meeting, they had they were just talking about the Giga Arctic process and the CEO was laying out all the risk factors that they were addressing and working to mitigate. And I’m thinking, man, that is a lot of risk.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:24:46] But they’ve got it all understood and they’re working on mitigating all of it. Right. I’m also thinking about a lot of the other players in this space who don’t even know what risk to think about. So right there, it’s just they’re advantaged. Freyr is advantaged in their ability to go build projects, which all these projects are going to have billion dollar crisis these are big, big facilities.
Stuart Turley [00:25:06] Oh, yeah.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:25:07] And it’s coming. So people are going to be doing this and we feel like we’re advantaged to be able to deliver on those large-scale projects as we just have a whole bunch of people that have done it many, many times.
Stuart Turley [00:25:18] So well on your financial aspect, on this, on looking for your investors and that kind of things, the tax advantages is critical for a lot of folks as far as even in looking in a new gigafactory or something in a local community that’s a huge discussion. I mean, you’re talking having some of these things roll into local areas is huge job opportunities and everything else.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:25:46] Absolutely. So when we went through our site selection process in the U.S. and settled on the Georgia facility, we we looked at 140 different locations in 34 states when we had it, we had this search criteria and we had several things, you know, cost of our availability of good quality labor. And, you know, you kind of go down the list.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:26:08] One of them was participation through local incentives by the by the municipalities, counties, states we were with. And once we got down, I think to our final nine, we had some pretty serious conversations about incentives.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:26:23] And what Georgia brought to the table was pretty interesting because you had you had this local county, Toledo County, which is where our plant will be located. Okay. Definitely leaning forward in a big way in the state of Georgia did, too. So both of them provided us a land grant that allowed us to really lower the cost of the of the land itself, which is 368 acres, is a big site.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:26:49] And then they also provided us tax incentives, which we’ve we’ve talked about publicly. But over $400 million of tax incentives, both from the county in the state that are all triggered on the number of jobs we’re going to add and the amount of capital expenditure we’re going to make at that facility.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:27:05] And now we set those standards where we believe we will achieve them but I mean, they’re significant adds when you think about it, to the tax base of quite a county in the state of Georgia.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:27:15] And so these are important not only to to generate interest in the local community, but also in creating the number of jobs. I mean, we’re going to have 600 jobs in the county, Georgia, that didn’t exist before and that’s that’s on a permanent basis.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:27:35] We add all the temporary jobs from the actual construction project that’s significantly more but these are big, nice, nice, big facilities with good high quality, high paying jobs coming to a lot of these states that that really wanted it. So.
Stuart Turley [00:27:50] Oh, that’s cool. So if there were 38 whatever site you had, what was the worst hotel you had to stay in while you’re traveling around?
Jeremy Bezdek [00:28:00] Thankfully, I had a I had a really good team that did a lot of it.
Stuart Turley [00:28:05] Okay,.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:28:06] Though. I will say, Stu, we we looked at 140 sites we only visited nine. So we went through our thought process to get down to nine. But we did have a team that went out to each one of them and laid eyes on them and, you know, evaluated what was good and what was bad.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:28:23] And I think what we found, like I said earlier, what I what we found in Georgia, where we’re extremely excited about this because of where it is, we’re just going out. The support from the local community and included County Development Authority has been fabulous.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:28:39] I think that oh yeah, they are so excited about our facility and I mean, we use their office. We don’t have an office yet we will have an office in the next couple of months in the town square of Georgia. But prior to that we just used in development office I mean, they let us use it whenever we need any, any sort of office space so it’s it’s pretty cool.
Stuart Turley [00:29:00] I’m going to go back and look at the announcement because I remember I believe it was Healey, and I hope I pronounce your name right. But Tom and everybody, I want to go look for you because there was that big announcement of everybody out there on the field and everything. If I remember that correctly, I think it’s pretty cool.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:29:16] You’re not going to see my picture there and here’s why because that was the end of November when it was closing up the land.
Stuart Turley [00:29:22] Oh, got it.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:29:23] And Tom came to the press and he was there shaking hands and cutting ribbons and those kind of things that I had not joined yet. So I was still I was on board, still so and had worked on my seat at coke on the site selection process. But so I wasn’t there, but did have a couple of people from our team there, which was exciting.
Stuart Turley [00:29:45] Oh yeah, it was pretty cool. So where do we see the next steps for you Jeremy? You got to you got to get the money. You got to get new locations, new projects. What is first for the next quarter? What are your targets again for next year?
Jeremy Bezdek [00:30:05] Yeah, sure. So, so number one, of course, is, is our fundraising process that we have for Gig America right now. We like I said, we’ve got a whole bunch of people involved in this we’ve got an advisor helping us run the show and we’re hoping to get to an initial closing here late third quarter, which would allow us to hit that summer of 2025 start production, which is which is our goal.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:30:31] As we look forward we’re evaluating a couple of different opportunities not only on this site because the site itself is so large, we could build multiple facilities there and plan to. But we’re also evaluating where else in the value chain do we want to participate? I mean, we’ve got some opportunities downstream from self production. We will, of course be making there at the site like DC BLOCK container. So we’ll make cells into modules, into racks and into a container that will be the product we actually sell to the energy storage market.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:31:04] Which is really the way the US market has evolved that’s what you have to do to be a player and so we’re going to do that. We’re also evaluating upstream for cell production do we want to get into cathode active material production? Potentially we might.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:31:18] You see a lot of companies investing all the way up into lithium. I mean, General Motors just announced a big lithium investment there have been others that. So how do we want to potentially put capital at play and in helping build out that domestic supply chain?
Jeremy Bezdek [00:31:34] And so I kind of view it as we’re in the middle of the of the value chain right now with cell production, we’re evaluating opportunities downstream and upstream. And I think we’ve got a real opportunity as one of the well, probably the purest play energy storage battery companies to be able to sort of differentiate ourselves as we move around the value chain as well so it’s exciting times.
Stuart Turley [00:31:58] It is. And so you also got another piece of your job there, and that is the worldwide development. So, you know, we know you’re going to own the U.S. in storage. You know, I think Tom has just increased your quota.
Stuart Turley [00:32:12] But, you know, you sit back and kind of go, how are you going to be directed at the rest of the world? Because we talk to U.S. Where are you going in the rest of the world with all this?
Jeremy Bezdek [00:32:23] Yeah. Yeah. So so that I mentioned the coalition a little bit earlier but let me tell you what we’re doing there, because it’s a big piece of it supports the U.S. business, it supports the Norwegian business, but it creates opportunities for us and our coalition partners across the value chain.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:32:39] And what we did is we look, we have identified this value chain and how do you localize it and democratize it. Tom likes to say bring it to a more sustainable way. And so what we what we did is we formed. This thing. It’s a lot of words, but it makes sense.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:32:55] The Energy Transition Acceleration Coalition and and we announced back in March the first four members in five, including us, Glencore, Siemens, Caterpillar and NIDA. I mean, these are big companies, big market cap companies that all participate with us at one place or another in the value chain.
Stuart Turley [00:33:16] Right.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:33:17] And all have a very similar vision, which was how do we enable clean battery production through the ability to lower the carbon footprint across the value chain. And so that’s what we’re working on we’ve got real workstreams that we’re digging into with people from each of the companies trying to solve not only problems but create commercial opportunities for each of the companies in the coalition, and that’s globally.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:33:41] So and then like I think I mentioned, we’ve got a couple of other names that we’re going to be announcing here over the next month that will be joining the coalition as well. It’s it’s something that we found as a way to sort of you know, we had all these one off conversations with these companies, but everybody was saying the same stuff to us.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:34:00] So let’s get everybody around the table because, you know, the power of five is better than the power of two and actually multilateral kind of benefits for everybody involved. It’s been good so far, and I’m really looking forward to how we can really launch this thing forward and so tackle a bunch of the problems that exist in the in the supply chain today.
Stuart Turley [00:34:23] Oh, absolutely that well that’s really cool that that coalition yeah. Let us know when we can help get the word out on it and get some things on our news channels and stuff.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:34:32] So yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:34:35] So how do people get a hold of you?
Jeremy Bezdek [00:34:38] Well, I’m on LinkedIn and got a lot of followers there. I’ve got you know, I will say Fred is incredibly active on a lot of social media from Twitter to to LinkedIn and all kinds of different places. But yeah, if anybody wants to reach out to me, be a LinkedIn, happy to chat with them. We’ve got a lot of activity and a lot of.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:35:02] First the other thing is we got a lot of open jobs we I mean, we have we have 20 something U.S. employees now going to, you know, 600 in the next two years. So a lot of opportunity. From a recruiting standpoint, we have I will say, as we filled roles in the US, there is so much interest in this transition space and they look at us that way to get into it. I’ll tell you this, do just as a footnote. We were hiring our head of human resources we had 983 applicants for one role.
Stuart Turley [00:35:39] Whoa!
Jeremy Bezdek [00:35:40] It’s hard enough just to sort through 983 applicant we found a great person, by the way she’s great, and she’s doing a great job for us. But just think about the kind of interest that is created in this energy transition space that’s a pretty interesting fact right there. So.
Stuart Turley [00:35:55] Oh, yeah, that’s a lot of people fighting for one job.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:36:00] That’s yeah, we’ll have a lot more we’ll have a lot more jobs so that’s I think the most exciting part of this is to see people wanting to get into this kind of a space and see it as the future, see it as something that, like I said, is a bit of the Wild West as far as opportunities go. And then it creates a lot of excitement for those of us that have had the opportunity to land in this space and it’s so exciting for us moving forward too.
Stuart Turley [00:36:26] Well, thank you so much, Jeremy, for stopping by the podcast. I had an absolute blast and we will tag you Hill de Tom and everybody, even when this thing rolls on out and gets out of production. So thank you again for stopping by look forward to visiting with you again.
Jeremy Bezdek [00:36:43] Thanks Stu very much. Thanks for having me.
Stuart Turley [00:36:45] Thanks.
