Welcome to another story and another video in my One Company One Story series.

This time, Graphene Manufacturing Company (GMGMF).

Here comes the amateur legalese.

I began investing in companies and their stocks in the late 70s, but am Not a certified investment professional.

My style and history of investing is described in Dream. Invest. Live., a book I wrote by request – which came out as the Great Recession (the Second Great Depression) began. Don’t underestimate luck. Oops. https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0035XVXAA

My personal finance blog (a blog about my finances) is: https://trimbathcreative.net/

I am Not an investment professional. This is Not financial advice. 

Graphene, the wonder material. That’s the way I see it. I grinned when seeing that Graphene Manufacturing Group used a similar term, The Carbon Wonder Product. Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMGMF) is an Australian firm developing products like batteries, lubricants, and HVAC materials. None of those are why I’ve followed the development of graphene, but they are examples of the diversity of applications for graphene. Early market projections for innovative technologies frequently get things wrong. PCs were supposed to be great in the kitchen because cooks could track their recipes. Ah, yet, and more. Graphene may be going through a similar maturation.

Graphene is a wonder product. Cue puns about wondering what, if anything is going to happen with it. Graphene is a form of carbon that sounds exotic but can occur accidentally. I have followed its progress because of its strength and conductivity capabilities. Graphene can be incredibly strong and light because it can be a single sheet or tube of carbon atoms. Trying to break graphene is not simply breaking chemical bonds but actually molecular bonds. A single sheet of graphene can theoretically be one large molecule only limited by practicality. A molecule of one element, carbon in this case, can be harder to break than a jumbled collection of molecules like almost everything else we encounter. Even steel and crystals aren’t as tough. Diamonds, which are carbon, are tough because of their crystalline structure. Graphene is analogous, similar to but not exactly, analogous to a diamond as thin as an atom deep but without limit in width and length. Very cool. I’m fascinated to see how it will change the world. (I particularly want to have a roof of the stuff.)

Enough about that. Graphene Manufacturing Group’s products seem to benefit from those properties but have more immediate and practical applications like batteries, lubricants, and HVAC coatings. Graphene may have theoretical capabilities for massive sheets, but practically can only be produced as smaller particles. Of course, produce enough of them and they become fundamental materials for jars of the stuff.

Go to their website for more details on their other applications, but for now, I’ll describe my understanding of their batteries. Basically, lithium-ion batteries are ruling the world. They are why so much of the world is now cordless and electrified. Unfortunately, lithium-ion batteries use uncommon materials (graphene is just carbon) and that can get hot (hence a few fires, and something to keep in mind with current devices). According to their website, their batteries also charge up to 70 times faster (something appealing to those who require overnight charging.)

The batteries alone can revolutionize much of the world. That’s why I am interested in them.

Of course, many innovative companies can, or at least hope to, revolutionize the world. Some do. Many don’t because of failures of the technology, practical limits, mismanagement, or mistimed launches, or other things, or combinations of those things. Great ideas don’t always work. Of course, when they do, they can be worth being associated with them.

As for the investment side of things, their stock price history looks like that of a lot of startups, bouncy and trending down until revenues drive it up. Note: GMGMF is Not an American company. That doesn’t invalidate it, but it does complicate investing in it for US investors. Attending a stockholders meeting can be a bit more involved. They are still a small company, but that’s how these things start. It has growth potential, but that is not readily apparent in the price. They also have tough competition. It would be a surprise if mega-corps weren’t also testing and creating such products. I haven’t analyzed the competition. That’s too big a task for this post, but it is something to be aware of. It also suggests that one consequence will be a buyout if they become too competitive. This can be a high risk/reward investment, but it can also be high maintenance.

As for market growth, look around at the ubiquity of electric vehicles and tools, and the commentary of having enough storage for wind and solar. These are not niche markets. They are reasons for growth. 

I don’t know what’s going to happen; but, I hope they survive and thrive. I’ll be watching.

The video: https://youtu.be/JKbvG0UHaGM

Coincidence

Within hours of posting my article and video I came across a year-old video from one of my favorite YouTube science communicators, Joe Scott. The topic: A Graphene Battery That Could Change Everything

He does a better job describing the tech – as always.