Start-up company Helium One is getting into bed with aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT) to breathe new life into airships technology.
Helium One’s major asset is the Rukwa project in the east-African country of Tanzania, which is independently estimated to host to an unrisked 100bn cubic feet of helium.
The plan is for Helium One to use Lockheed's airships to transport helium from Rukwa to port for shipping.
Helium, of course, is used to power airships, and Helium One hopes to win a contract to supply helium to Lockheed's entire fleet of airships when it gets off the ground in 2018.
“We like the thought of shipping our product using our product,” Helium One’s chief executive Tom Abraham-Jones was quoted as saying.
Helium is also used as a cooling medium, most commonly in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners, while it is also a key component in the Large Hadron Collider, based in Switzerland, which is looking for the so-called God particle.
London-listed Solo Oil last month bought a 10% stake in Helium One for £2.55mln and has an option to double that stake for a further outlay of £4mln.
Speaking to Proactive Investors Solo Oil chief executive Neil Ritson highlighted that helium is a resource that’s scarce; the market needs new supplies of the gas in the coming years.
“It has very strong demand growth from emerging industries, it is hard to substitute given its special properties, as a result of that we’ve seen price escalation [in the commodity] and that is something we want to get on the back of,” Ritson said.
Helium One is reportedly mulling listing on the London stock market later this year.