First Graphene : AGM Chairman's Address & CEO Presentation

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FIRST GRAPHENE

2021 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

CHAIRMAN'S ADDRESS

Every start-up company needs to go through a procession of changes as it goes from concept to production and along to commerciality. First Graphene is at the point where an influx of new blood and vision needs to take over, and it has. The new team is now charged with establishing commerciality of the business on a solid footing. It needs a different set of eyes and vision. Different strategies and tactics are being employed with a strong focus on the commercialisation of our technically superior PureGRAPH product range.

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The year to 30 June 2021 will be remembered as the year of the pandemic by the entire world. It hasbeen the most significant global event that any of us alive today have experienced and we are not outof the woods yet. Everyone and every company hasbeen affected to a lesser or greater extent, and I suppose every chairman's address will mention it as a matter of procedure.

The biggest impacts on First Graphene have been twofold. Firstly, a number of our prospective customers were significantly slower in moving to incorporate PureGRAPH® into the products due to lockdowns that restricted the availability of workers and inhibited regular production schedules. A level of heightened caution worked against any suggestion of accelerated innovation. Thus, we were not able to deliver the sales growth we had earlier anticipated. Secondly, there were many months during which our research and product development programs were interrupted by shutdowns of the University of Manchester, where we have operations in the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC).

Covid aside, 2021 was a year that involved a changing of the guard at First Graphene. We saw the retirement of both the CEO and CFO, who had

been with the Company since 2012. They comprised the key management team for approximately 10 years, initially as a mineral exploration company and for the last five years as a graphene visionary.

When First Graphene started out on the graphene journey there was no road map to follow. It was almost a case of the blind leading the blind. All we knew was how wonderful graphene was supposed to be and what a great future awaited those

who were willing to embrace this wonderful 2D nanomaterial. It was a very steep learning curve.

First Graphene quickly realised that a major obstacle to the advancement of the segment was the availability of a reliable supply of graphene

of consistent quality, irrespective of price. No manufacturing company would look to introduce graphene to their product lines if they could not see clear supply lines to make the change worthwhile. Many companies that experimented with graphene expressed frustration owing to the mixed results they achieved in test work, attributable to the lack of consistency from one batch to the next.

First Graphene set about addressing these concerns by taking a bench-scale graphene production methodology, pioneered by the University of Adelaide, and scaling it up firstly to a pilot plant size,

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and then to a full commercial-scale manufacturing facility of Henderson, south of Fremantle in WA.

In getting to this position, the Company had to grapple with another chicken and egg conundrum. Nothing could happen without a production facility, but no-one was going to buy the product and make changes to their production lines if they could not see tangible evidence that there was a real and reliable supply.

As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day. The pioneering of new technology, taking it from the point of invention to commercial, profitable scale involves many steps and requires many different skills to meet the ever-evolving challenges along the way. Having shown that we can make graphene, your Company has recognised that the next major challenge is to sell volume to the target markets. It is not just a matter of putting our For Sale sign on the door because there is no established market already operating that we can simply enter with a promise of better product than what industry is already buying. We have to play a leading role in developing the market by interfacing with industry to show how much better their products will be with the incorporation of graphene. At the same time, we have to show how individual companies will achieve

stronger sales growth, through increased market share, when producing superior products.

Every start-up company needs to go through a procession of changes as it goes from concept to production and along to commerciality. Just as with a mineral exploration company, that is staffedby geologists who have to stand aside to enable the engineers to do their job, First Graphene is at the point where an influx of new blood and vision needs to take over, and it has. The recently retired team was instrumental in delivering production capability. The new team is now charged with establishing commerciality of the business on a solid footing. It needs a different set of eyes and vision and it involves different skill sets. Different strategies and tactics are required.

We are confident that the changes instituted this year have placed First Graphene in the best possible position to maximise the graphene opportunity before us.

Warwick Grigor

Chairman

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ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING PRESENTATION - MD/CEO
	NOVEMBER 2021
ASX:FGE - INVESTOR PRESENTATION	1

We lco m e n o t e

•	Welcome
only	A year of change
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• FGR - A materials technology company
•	Commercialization process
use	Market segments and the Commercial Team to take these forward
•
• A taste of what's in progress
• Green Tech - Cement/Concrete, Kainos, Supercapacitors
ersonal	Board changes
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• Wrap up - key messages
• Hand to CFO for Finance Update
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A ye a r o f ch a n g e

• Change of CEO and CFO leading to a reset of overall strategy

only	Switch from process/capacity investment, to revenue generation (passive to active)
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• Developed materials segment structure and associated GTM strategies
• Recruited an industry specific Commercial Team with technical & sales skills
use	Revised Board of Directors with critical skillsets to take FGR forward
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• Revised key processes - ERP system, legal, consultants and Co-Sec
• Personnel restructure, recruitment of commercial team, revised remuneration policy, we have
ersonal	now reduced personnel costs by >$700k p.a.
Revised strategy on R&D to be critically linked with path to revenue
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• Record revenue Q4 FY21 of 58% of total FY21 revenue, and record PureGRAPH revenue Q1
	FY22 of 40% of total FY21 revenue
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