Versarien PLC (LON:VRS) said commercial interest in graphene has soared following a successful trial with Manchester University’s National Graphene Institute (NGI).
The company’s 2D-Tech subsidiary has worked with the NGI since 2014 on ways to strengthen carbon fibre composites using graphene
The grant-funded project has ended but the NGI has indicated it wants to buy a significant quantity of graphene from Versarien for a specific project with a major company.
Numerous other companies are now also interested.
Professor Robert Young, Professor of Polymer Science and Technology at the university, said the [unnamed] major UK company is evaluating graphene for use in a number of different structural components with production possible within six months.
Neill Ricketts, Versarien’s chief executive, added it was seeing real demand from commercial customers.
“We intend to significantly scale up our capacity to produce graphene to meet the demand we are seeing, which is only expected to increase."