Member Info for belgrano

Any seller with a successful market share selling matrixyl in its product would be very brave to swop the formulation to include ours. Matrixyl, was at the time really touted as the best face cream additive on the market. However now our product has come along and some believe it is superior. Whether the 12,000 Croda clients want it remains yet to be seen, however the data from Cath does certainly point at it becoming in demand as the next best thing.

Exactly right Clio, and the one we can all agree on is your last statement, that the launch should be substantially more successful than our one.
That I know is not a dig in any way, its just that they have direct contact to all the Sederma main customers and those that make the decisions. Having the additional equipment built means that when those orders come in they can blend in our product to the customers specifications, texture, viscosity, moisture and quantity of "sprinkles". They may all differ very slightly so can offer the customer a full range of products containing our lysate not just the basic one fits all. This will considerably increase the quantity of orders and enables the final customer to claim uniqueness and indeed a "special price" which they set.

The equipment also has to be tied into current utility pipelines, linked to control rooms/panels, high powered electric agitators within vessels, inert blanketing, steam quenching if req, within fixed fire fighting parameters (normally ring main hydrants). Once you see all this and appreciate thats why there isnt normally any down time, you can see why I think having that production line waiting solely for us if we get orders is indeed ............
Best regards, Bel.

Its good to keep everything civil, and to have proper debate,
please just consider the skilled manpower aspect of things if a "dedicated production line has actually been built for us"
Well site space is a premium for starters, so it costs to have non operational equipment. Will also have to be undercover, so extra contamination proof space req.....
Next manpower, takes trained operators to know how to set everything up...Does anyone actually believe that trained guys who know and familiar with the equipment will just turn up for a couple of days work a week/month/year.
No all production lines are designed for constant daily operation and often essential maint at nights or multiple trains running, and one gets taken down for maint.
Once you come to this conclusion its clear that the production facility is multi purpose.
Also a 20t reactor can be also multi purpose, I've operated a few that size, although clean out takes at least 12 hrs which is very important, as equipment like this is never doing nothing. Indeed run plans are formulated for 3 months in advance, with most reactors just doing a grade change where possible so not having need to fully clean.ie ..going higher viscosity product or cream. Then at end of run clean out and drop back to the lower ones and run again...each different spec has a different customer.

Hi AS,
Thats a great question, and I'll try a stab, believe me I'm very upbeat about whats hopefully going to happen with Croda but believe we should have an accurate picture, because I certainly got it wrong early this year as was unaware that access to USA NPF members was conditional on signing up a distribution deal to their favoured clients. This was after they had a hand in setting the AXIS price point. Pretty sure most investors here also the same, so although it may seem a bit petty to some small details are important, because this cost us over 1M.

Regarding construction of a 20t bio reactor, rather than a a smaller 600ltr one, would depend on what product the 600ltr one was making prior to making our 4 batches, and the requirement for it to return to its previous product run. I'd love to jump to the conclusion " we are going to be going "balls out", so need a reactor 18 times the size, just to cope with demand.
Well that's probably not the case, and would depend on site requirements on the bigger picture not just our lysate.
One thing to iron out here is the cost.. I expect the final cost of a vessel 18 times bigger, would be double. ..not 18 times, thats an important point as running cost efficiency improves multiples when one man runs one 20t batch or 18 X 600ltr ones. Then throw in quality control and testing, along with pipeline clearing and wastage and the savings are clear.
Also have the ability to use the reactor for other blends or formulations as well, really want to get away from the concept that a reactor would stand idle waiting for our exclusive use.. It doesn't happen unless our sales go through the roof with every Sederma customer wanting our lysate. Believe me, we know its not impossible, but unlikely in the forthcoming year. I've heard our board say that when the customers want the next best thing "things can get very silly indeed." No one would be more happy than me if this proved to be the case.

Hi AS,
Thats a great question, and I'll try a stab, believe me I'm very upbeat about whats hopefully going to happen with Croda but believe we should have an accurate picture, because I certainly got it wrong early this year as was unaware that access to USA NPF members was conditional on signing up a distribution deal to their favoured clients. This was after they had a hand in setting the AXIS price point. Pretty sure most investors here also the same, so although it may seem a bit petty to some small details are important, because this cost us over 1M.

Regarding construction of a 20t bio reactor, rather than a a smaller 600ltr one, would depend on what product the 600ltr one was making prior to making our 4 batches, and the requirement for it to return to its previous product run. I'd love to jump to the conclusion " we are going to be going "balls out", so need a reactor 18 times the size, just to cope with demand.
Well that's probably not the case, and would depend on site requirements on the bigger picture not just our lysate.
One thing to iron out here is the cost.. I expect the final cost of a vessel 18 times bigger, would be double. ..not 18 times, thats an important point as running cost efficiency improves multiples when one man runs one 20t batch or 18 X 600ltr ones. Then throw in quality control and testing, along with pipeline clearing and wastage and the savings are clear.
Also have the ability to use the reactor for other blends or formulations as well, really want to get away from the concept that a reactor would stand idle waiting for our exclusive use.. It doesn't happen unless our sales go through the roof with every sederma customer wanting our lysate. Believe me, we know its not impossible, but unlikely in the forthcoming year. I've heard our board say that when the customers want the next best thing "things can get very silly indeed." No one would be more happy than me if this proved to be the case.

What we find in industry is specialisation in product families, to avoid gross or harmful contamination, which in an extreme case could be lethal, so each independent unit will specialise in that one, like "engine oils" "antifreeze" "Carbowax phama pill coatings", and many more. However skilled manpower has to be employed all the time and retained so the process has to run every day, not wait until one Sederma customer decides to order 1m bottles next year, and our "dedicated production line" suddenly goes at top speed , (for a day.) ..Is it "thanks for your days work..come back next year".. Lol just joking here but you see the point, these production lines really churn out the product, hence the requirement for a 20t reactor......dont want the production line waiting (and 15 contractors) for another 600kg batch of additive lysatte sprinkles.
I expect we have our own storage vessel and some lines to the main blend tanks.. and little else. The rest would be universal, but I'll happily tell any customer we are building it for your product.. which is actually true. ...for a day or two.

Hi Gents,
Firstly sorry for a longish post but just want to draw somewhat from my experience in the speciality chemicals industry where I actually worked for a few years before moving to Exxon chemicals, then onto the petroleum side of things.
I worked at now Geo speciality Chemicals Cadland rd, Hythe (look it up), previously , Hythe chemicals, BP, Union Carbide infamous for its India Bopal incident.
We had many processes and literally hundreds of products each formulated to to exact customers specifications, and how many had a totally dedication production line...none of them. let me explain an example.
One production assembly might be dedicated to a particular group of products ..let me use one example ..production of ethylene glycol used a s the main base ingredient for antifreeze...similar to say the Croda face cream basic chemical make up. Then you have many blending tanks where the customers specific brand is produced, mainly just the basic diluted ethylene glycol mix , but many want to differentiate so use a different colour dye (industrial strength), I've added this to the tanks many times. Or a slightly different additive of which there are many...one could be "sprinkles of our lysate but would be fed in bulk, not like a sugar shaker on the top and blended in the mix. When OK for quality control, it would then be slowly pumped to a production line where contract labour would oversee an automated can or bottle filling process. Each product would have different label, possibly different colour bottle, and unique spec. Goes to say the very similar product was sold at vastly different prices and going into most cars today. Each manufacturer recommends its own "unique" products and has different sales volumes. But basically the same product.
Production lines churn out product at quite a pace and are expensive and the labour intensive part of the process, that skilled and semi skilled labour is always employed as downtime is expensive and regular maintenance essential from skilled engineers. People using forklifts and indeed those sorting out the various containers or pots, packaging and distribution.
Only products that have a huge ongoing customer requirement, get their own process line such as "kiplins cakes", as they are required every day.
Croda face cream which is sold in vast quantities probably has its own dedicated production line and when an order comes in from one of its customers, conditions are changed to bring in the product from that reactor/digester/ or most probably tank and pot up via the universal canning or potting line.

5M in investment, believe me wont buy you much at all where everything is stainless steel and designed to order.. So expect we have our own lysate pot, and when the order comes in, the production line will churn out our exclusive product....Just like winclove did for us in making Axis in their reactors. But it wasn't an exclusive production line there either.

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/pharmaceutical-factory-equipment-mixing-tank-on-214256035
This isn't Crodas, but gives the idea of what equipment sort would be employed in production. The tanks or digestors would have mixers within them. The finished blend is then tested and processed. This is probably a bit high tech but essential to get right formulation.

Hi Elrico,
I'm going to disagree with you on that on Elrico, as I've worked in the specialised chemicals industry, where we also had 20 t and 6 t reactors which of I operated 9 of them, both in field and from control rooms.
The contract production line was designed and built to be multiproduct with the "tank farm" holding many different products and ingredients , which would normally be first blended , QC tested and then "canned", be it bottles or containers, direct from the farm with the ingredients which were in my case extremely expensive pharma products on pump recycles from their retrospect tanks all under inert gas blankets.
Just think about it from a practical viewpoint from one minute, and forget what Stuart said, because I doubt hes ever spent much time in the production processes either, but great selling point from Croda pushing !" we are building this just for you". Well that's horse****, might well end up just running our products or more likely Croda products, and if the order demands it , there might be a "sprinkle" of our product in some runs. However when you invest millions in any production facility its always multi purpose or can be tweaked to be so. Any downtime is a huge waste so its normally running at max until that order is completed and they swap to the next one. I'm sure they have built it, but I'm equally sure it wont be shutdown until our product is required if an order comes in next year or so.

Wishing all investors here a happy Christmas and a prosperous new year.

Good to hear that Croda have possibly completed 4 X 600Ltr lysate batch runs. That would have certainly given them a decent stockpile of product to ship to Sederma customers. Know its been well over a year since they received these samples now.
Also believe another reason could be to check the repeatability of the product formulation, testing procedure , and seeing if with these larger batches they are still getting repeatable product with the enhanced results seen.
Great to hear they have also built a new production line and have a 20t product reactor. However although great, we must take this bit with a very large pinch of salt and these production lines can be multi purpose, and although it might be solely for products witch contain a "sprinkle" of our lysate, they could still run just as well with another ingredients instead.
Our company will certainly find out a lot more from Croda early next year.

Could this be large amounts of axis unsold stock ?? If so any decision to leave 1.2M on the table due to getting a much better deal (not announced yet), also incurred additional product losses, which we might not have known about..and warehousing for it.
Thought it had a 2 year shelf life,

Actually not going to knock the company over this one as we have to appreciate a new man in the job who has only just joined. Had we been in profitability it may have been a completely different matter.
Also they were rushing to get the accounts out after not having anyone doing them for a good part of the year.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/nrv.asp

When the company goes into profitability it can offset more tax against published losses.

Hi Toyin,
Does throw into question the actual true motives of the NPF if we lost all access because we didn't want to surrender good margins to one of their distributer after setting product prices at an affordable level in order to maximise complaint relief to all their psoriasis sufferers. Little wonder why some of the alternative treatments on the market cost an arm and a leg, if there are many greedy palms to fill in getting it to customers to aid their suffering.

Hi Elrico and Toyin,
No group threat intended for sure, however I do feel guilty when friends comment that SBTX has turned into the worst investment they hold on my recommendation. I tend to follow this stock the most and often get calls requesting opinions.
I do like to play devils advocate a lot, after once being really badly burned when I held 3% of a minnow oil company which went bust so now look at both sides of the spectrum not just the positive ones. I'm sure everyone here has had similar nightmares.
I believe this is a really important thing to do for investors, especially when some stocks are showing some really good gains while others seem caught in a downtrend with little immediate way of reversing their fortunes. This is very important when we have inflation ramping into double digits and I have got an exposed position here. So forward looking for me is important but I fully appreciate the difficulties of that, and we should always put a rough timescale against such plans, as its easy to do nothing just to find 4-5 years have lapsed, your stock worth half, and opportunity 's elsewhere missed.
By actually posting comments that might or are construed as negative by some it does promote discussion and posters like yourself and Toyin come up with some excellent points that might not have been considered. Its not any dig, but I'm still puzzled how we were so far off the mark with axis sales because we all agree the product is superb.
Can only realistically think that we didn't really have the endorsement of NPF, because we've probably not got many more subscribers than those that participated in the study, where as I was hoping for several thousand by now, and expecting company profitability by next year.
So appreciate all views and appreciate your posts.

Just trying to think one step ahead here and assess success probability, and whether its more of a punt verses solid investment.
So if our company snap up a nice little UK distribution company which stands nicely in profitability can see its great on its own and we might also get it to sell our products, however we still have some awkward UK hurdles to get over. We know GP's cannot prescribe our products as not NHS (Nice) registered.. Also with UK psoriasis forums we will keep getting thrown back in our faces "hasn't undergone medical trials", we all know the solid reasons for this, but its still there. Can't see how things can be changed at any speed here. A year ago I really believed sales would fly, I believed that as "preregistration numbers were growing at an alarming rate" and product filled a gap in the market was wrong there and reality points at sluggish growth only , with huge amount of product gathering dust. Certainly need some drive here, but it does seem to be taking a back seat. Expected the "mighty" NPF, to endorse our products but we are not even on their "favoured", list yet, despite our company trying to achieve it. This is a big hurdle which I didn't envisage as after being told that the NPF were supposedly very vocal about us prioritizing that treatment first, according to Stuart, seems to have fallen off the radar, and not even advertised anymore.... Very strange if true.

Seems the only way out is outsourcing the pillar to a major player with already established lines of sales, which Stuart has supposedly been doing since last spring. Some of my good friends don't believe this, and that's its a face saving response to a total sales launch failure. Others here firmly believe Stuart and I hope they are right.

Many thanks Elrico for getting that out despite feeling very unwell. Excellent effort. Can see from todays RNS that investor take up is just OK but not overwhelming.
My thoughts on this are that pi's here probably have not known the points you have just released, whereas the big institutions had that information given to them in personalised calls, from those raising the funds, be it our brokers or clarification from our board.
So in summary I believe had that information been available pi uptake would have been higher.
However now that information is known, I also know those selling stock will be reduced or amounts reduced.

remains tobe seenif the broker is going to support the share price around current levels when we see some decent sized sales. I certainly hope so.

When investors don't feel things are going well, I don't mind when they air their concerns here, even if unfounded. However when investors have sold up completely and still continue to post negative viewpoints in order to put off others or try and drop the price in my book that poster is a troll.