N.H. startup has potential to ignite regional nanotechnology sector
Back in July, I introduced you to Nanocomp Technologies, a Concord, N.H., manufacturer of advanced materials that the Portland-based venture capital fund I manage — CEI Community Ventures — first funded in 2006. The company's carbon nanotube, I'd noted, "looks to be as transformative an innovation in advanced materials as plastic, aluminum and carbon fiber were in their time." By the time you read this, Nanocomp will have closed its most significant financing in its history on favorable terms with a Fortune 100 market leader.
Carbon nanotubes have been heralded as the strongest, lightest and most conductive materials on Earth. Nano means small — think 100th of the width of a hair. Under a powerful microscope, carbon nanotubes look like sheets of rolled up metal fences. For several decades, scientists and businesses have pursued its mythic properties: 100 times the strength and five times the elasticity of steel; 1,000 times the current capacity, 15 times the thermal capacity and five times the electrical conductivity of copper; and half the density of aluminum. To realize these properties, these nanotubes must be produced at significantly greater lengths than they have — until recently — been produced. While there are many producers of short carbon nanotubes, Nanocomp makes them long enough to matter to corporations and defense buyers.
Nanocomp's products — sheets, tapes and wires — are more than 95% pure carbon-nanotube products sold by the roll, the spool and — in time — by the ounce. By contrast, other carbon nanotube producers sell into limited, low-performance applications in which carbon nanotubes comprise less than 5% of the end product. Nanocomp has not yet achieved the comparable figures shown above, but has produced the strongest, lightest, most conductive form of these materials in the United States and likely on Earth.
Having been founded in 2004 and first funded in 2006, the company has a multi-year lead; has many profitable large markets; and presently no meaningful competition for its performance, form factors, industrial scale and space qualifications. Its products require less capital, labor and operating expenses than other incumbent metal, plastics, ceramic and carbon fiber manufacturers. It's got a one-step manufacturing process that is non-extractive and so environmentally benign. Nanocomp's materials are safe and, unlike their short-particle formats, cannot be inhaled.
The material's performance will enable the company to create new products and will enhance applications for which metals, carbon fiber and plastics presently serve. Think lightweight and strong applications like auto and aerospace bodies, such as replacing some of the 8,000 pounds of copper wire and shielding found on an average wide-body jet; think lightweight thermal applications, like converting waste heat to energy on the ground and in the air. The list of applications is much longer.
The U.S. Department of Defense has designated this company's materials as essential to national defense. Concurrent with this designation, Nanocomp received this year a multi-million dollar, multi-year cost-match program, the Defense Procurement Act Title III, designed to increase the company's scale and performance, and reduce cost and open broader market applications
For these reasons and more, the company expects to have a healthy and profitable demand for its products; even with multiple competitors, the market for these transformative materials will be underserved by supply for years, if not decades, to come.
While it is true my opinion might be influenced by my investor-director role, what I tell you is true and verifiable. The carbon nanotubes' superlatives — strongest, lightest, most conductive, safest, lowest cost, most strategic to the Department of Defense — seem hard to believe, even as I write them, but check it out for yourself:
- National Nanotechnology Initiative Report to President Obama (2010); page 34; whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/.../pcast-nano-report.pdf
- United States Department of Defense Taps Nanocomp Technologies as Nanomanufacturing Partner; www.businesswire.com/.../United-States-Department-Defense-Taps-
Silicon Valley got its namesake from the birth of the semiconductor industry in that region. According to the Brookings Institute and others, regions that are proximate to this advanced manufacturing asset can drive higher relative regional GDP and high-wage job growth. If it is skilled in managing the demands of growth, Nanocomp will continue to be a regional showcase and magnet for innovation, nanotechnology, advanced energy and advanced manufacturing.
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