EnWave Corp (TSX-V:ENW, OTC:NWVCF) earlier this week confirmed two new agreements aimed at expanding its footprint in both Asia and North America.
CEO Brent Charleton spoke with Proactive about how the technology could help pharmaceutical firms reduce costs and improve process reliability.
Proactive: A couple of big pieces of news out from the company. First off, a commercial license agreement in Japan. You really hit the point that you're a global company and you continue to prove that.
Brent Charleton: Yeah, this is right. This is actually the third license that we’ve signed in Japan. For those who don’t have experience working there, it takes a longer period of time than in most other countries to forge relationships. But once they're forged, they’re lifelong and often very fruitful. We're really happy to be partnered with Hokkai Yamato, a company that is already commercializing soup mixes and snack products. We think our technology will fit very nicely into their portfolio.
Obviously, Japan has a large market. Are there a lot of companies like this that you can continue working with, or are you also looking at other areas?
Yeah, absolutely. EnWave currently works with a third-party representative in Japan who is looking for new opportunities for our sales pipeline. Beyond Hokkai Yamato, we've also been working with Calbee—one of the largest global snacking companies—for several years. They have a huge runway to expand not only domestically but internationally, which we hope will lead to future royalty growth.
There's a royalty component here as well, right? That’s obviously a positive for the company.
Yes, the deal stays true to our business model. For every product they sell to market, we get a royalty. The goal of our business is to build a massive, diversified royalty portfolio that continues to grow over time.
Let's shift back to North America. You’ve also signed an agreement with BioTechnique, a US-based company.
BioTechnique is a company we’ve been speaking with for several years. They were involved in evaluating prior studies completed using our technology by Merck Pharmaceutical for vaccines. The results from the Merck study were incredibly positive. So BioTechnique started to work with their client base—which includes many of the largest pharmaceutical companies globally—on biopharmaceutical product development using our tech.
This is the first official deal, with a master service agreement and a work order. We'll be receiving several batches of liquid biopharmaceutical products to dry at our Vancouver facilities. If testing is successful, we hope BioTechnique will acquire their own machinery for use at their facilities in Pennsylvania.
Your technology is an alternative to freeze drying. Can you explain the differences and why that matters?
The biggest difference is processing time. We're drying biopharmaceutical products in three to six hours. These are highly sensitive materials that need to be dried at consistently low temperatures. Freeze drying could take a day or more for the same batch size. We're talking about significant savings in labor and time.
Also, our large-scale machinery is continuous. If something goes wrong during the process, it can be corrected quickly. With freeze drying, a problem with a batch means the entire batch is written off. That’s a major cost. Our technology offers a way for pharmaceutical companies to de-risk their manufacturing processes.
Quotes have been lightly edited for style and clarity