73. No cows here: Could your pint become your next leather wallet? | TJ Mitchell

0:00Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business, management and leadership. Every episode, I sit down with different guests who bootstrap companies, masterminded investment models or built a business empire. They're leaders in their field and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture. Today on All About Business, I'm joined by Dr. Edward Mitchell, co-founder and chief technology officer of Arda Biomaterials, a startup developing animal and plastic-free leather alternatives made from waste grain produced by brewers and distillers.

0:46In this episode, we discuss the journey from scientist to entrepreneur, the challenges of building a deep tech startup, and the potential for new materials to transform the way products are made. Today on All About Business, I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Edward Mitchell, otherwise known as TJ Mitchell. He's the founder, or I should say co-founder and chief technology officer of Arda Biomaterials. This is a London-based biomaterials startup that creates animal-free and plastic-free leather alternatives. some of which are in front of you here on our table tj um you've done this i think this is a wonderful story i don't want to say too much in the introduction because i'd like you to explain why you've gone along the road you have and why you make the product in the way you do but let's begin with why tj yeah it's a good question uh well first of all thank you very much for having me here yeah tj is a weird one um it's my dad's side of the family still call me edward but pretty much everyone else calls me tj and it's when i was born my parents separated and i grew up with my mom and my mom's side of the family are all scottish and my scottish granddad refused to have a grandchild by the name of edward because it's so english so i edward hammer of the scots exactly exactly the king yeah so no one's called edward in scotland no well there must be there must be i didn't know that so tj was the preference yeah so short for Edward is Teddy.

2:20So I had to grow up as Teddy Joe, Joseph being my middle name. And Teddy Joe, not a name you want to be called at school. You get picked on for being called Teddy. So quickly became TJ. So TJ was a survival strategy in Scotland at the time. Yeah. Well, unfortunately it paid off. Yeah. Which brings you here today. I didn't grow up in Scotland. I'm actually from Cheshire, Warrington. So there's different levels to it but yeah if you visited your grandparents at least yeah so well i'd like to start by exploring the beginnings of arda you know you have a background in chemistry research um what led you to explore the idea of turning waste grain from brewing which is i believe what you do and and distilling waste grain into new materials how did you end up doing that yeah it's um there's so much serendipity across the whole journey to get here.

3:12I think the first thing is my PhD research was nothing to do with this. I was actually developing sensors for long-term radioactive waste storage, and it went fairly well. We patented the technology. We were looking at potentially startup space, but it wasn't for me really four years of intense lab-based research on that. I just wanted to get away from it. And the question was, what would I do after I finished my PhD? and I'd seen so many of my peers struggle to really find themselves with a stable position in academia. I also didn't really want to be in a lab too much longer. I looked at some friends who'd gone into consulting and their careers on paper were great, but they were looking for their next move in their career.

3:54They were actually quite fed up of consulting. So I looked around, I looked for different opportunities and I saw this program called Entrepreneurs First. So I'm not sure whether you're familiar with the program. I'm aware of it, but tell us what it is. Yeah, so there's quite a few of these programs. There's Zinc, there's Antler, there's Carbon 13 as Entrepreneurs First. Essentially, it's kind of like Love Island meets Dragon's Den. They bring in maybe 80 people, half the people are commercial types, half the people are technical types, and you have to meet and match up to find a business partner.

4:28If you don't find someone, you get kicked off the program. If you do, you have an opportunity to pitch your investment. And so it's for those who don't necessarily have an idea already, but you go in potentially wanting to start your entrepreneurship journey and find a co-founder. And it was during this program that essentially we invented the technology behind what we're doing. So hang on. So you went to an event organized by entrepreneurs first. So you met your business partner or co-founder at that event? Yeah. So it's a six-month program. So you apply to it and everyone has to quit their jobs.

5:01So you've got your CEO types joining. So they're the more commercial side, the 40 commercial people. Bankers, private equity, consultants, people from various industries. They have to quit their jobs. They have to quit their job. That's part of the deal. You get paid to be part of the program. Right. It's not much, but coming from a PhD, it was more than a PhD. Right. But it's probably not more than being a consultant. Oh, it's definitely not. It's barely anything really. Okay. So it shows some commitment that people do this. Yeah. You've really got to commit to it because they wouldn't want to back anyone who wasn't fully committed to their journey and to really being a co-founder.

5:36The other half of the people are mostly tech types. So you mostly get your software developers, but a few PhD students don't go through. So you get into this program. They have this sort of kickoff weekend, which is like a freshers week at university where everyone's trying to sell themselves. You sit around and you have these speed dating sessions where you chat to everyone. And the people in the program, some of them are incredibly impressive. um there was one chap in our program who was shortlisted to be part of one direction but turned it down and he'd had a whole sort of artistic career after that there was people who'd sold their own startups already and who were looking for a new co-founder and a whole new opportunity and going into this world it was incredibly intimidating and i'd been essentially in a lab for four years and everyone kind of had their angles and who they wanted to be and I was trying to sell myself but what were you trying to sell yourself as well I'd finished a PhD on sensing for long-term radioactive waste so I was kind of pitching that as my angle really I should have just been pitching kind of chemistry and industrial and sustainability the things I really care about um but it was when I met my co-founder as part of the program that we kind of really the gears started to kick into action so who's your co-founder so his name's Brett Cotton.

6:50He's from New Jersey in the States. And he has a really interesting story. So he always wanted to be in like biotech industry and he did his undergraduate in biochemistry, but he had a mentor who said, look, you could take, you could go straight into a master's, you could go straight into a career, or you could take a year out whilst you're young and do something you're really interested in. So he took a year out and he interviewed biotech founders from across the world and collated those interviews into a book and published a book. And by doing so, he built an incredible network, learned so much, and then learned about new opportunities.

7:29And from that, he went to do a master's in Cambridge in the UK in biotech enterprise, a course he likens to an MBA for biotech people who don't really want to go full into business, but want to keep their foot still on the scientific side. And after that, he got involved with several startups doing business development um working with vcs and due diligence but his passion was to start his own company and he actually applied to entrepreneur first a few times before he got in and then he got in and it's when i met him he was so familiar with all these different startups all these crazy ideas that were happening more in the synthetic biology side so the kind of science where you get cells to create things lab-grown meats uh fermentation type processes, that realm.

8:17And when I first met him, he was telling me about all these different startups. And I'd say, look, I'm not a biologist. I'm a chemist. And chemistry is the science of industry. And it's often chemistry is quite in the background, even though it powers so much for this world. People think physics and big questions and big problems. People think biology and medicine. But the chemistry is, there's still so much innovation there. This Earth Day, your gift can make double the difference. From the 22nd to the 29th of April through biggive.org, donations to environmental charities will be doubled. Earthraise gives you the power to turn your generosity into real, lasting impact.

9:00Together we can protect wildlife, restore habitats and help nature thrive. Visit biggive.org between the 22nd and the 29th of April. Choose a cause close to your heart and make double the difference. Thank you for supporting Earthrate. So you started this conversation, this dance with your co-founder, and you obviously came to a view that this was a good opportunity to try. Yeah. How did that happen? I mean, so he was a biochemist or... Yeah, so not really a scientist, but understood that world and focused on it. So he's the CEO, I'm CTO. he was he was proposing all these different ideas and i have to say i'm chemist so what could we work on and valorization the transformation of waste was something at the forefront that we think we could work on that that's what valorization means yeah that's new word for me transformation of waste valorization yeah it's uh increasing the value of something i guess that's kind of the fundamental okay that's interesting and we were looking at lots of ideas and part of the entrepreneur first program is you have two months to find a business partner to settle down with and say that's who i'm working with and if you don't have someone you get kicked off so there is this kind of there's a lot of courting going on people are making up people are breaking up you have to announce every makeup and breakup on on the slack channel so at the start everyone's like oh yeah they were so great to work with by the end of it no one is talking about like people are just like scrambling and getting more entertaining it is it would be good for tv it is stressful i did have some people after me but some buzz stops yeah Brett moved me.

10:39But eventually you found the good match. Yeah, so we partnered together. And initially we actually, it's kind of an irony to Entrepreneur First. They say like, oh, we're bringing in people who are outside the box. And now you get there and they try and put you in their box. So we actually sneakily didn't announce all of our pair-ups at the start. We saw this pitch competition for it and we scrambled together a startup idea and we pitched for the competition. wasn't so good oh we didn't win but what we discovered is we were very good at working together and we decided at that point we would stick together and entrepreneur first is constantly monitoring you you're kind of because a lot of it is investing in the founders rather than the idea and we were kind of trying to show how hustly we were as well because if they don't think you're moving quick enough they they force you to break up and that causes a lot of tension and we actually broke into this conference to just try and network and speak to people and learn as much and so we chatted to this guy who said oh you're in bermondsey in south london which is where i coincidentally lived i'd just moved down to london and it's where brett lived and it just so happened to be where entrepreneur first was but more important than that it just so happened to be where the famous bermondsey beer mile is there's some something like for those who don't know describe it yeah like 10 to 20 microbreweries tap rooms under the arches under the railway for about a mile in Bermondsey.

12:02Stagdus love it. Groups of pals love it. It's, um, it is good fun. The Bermondsey Beer Mile, everyone. The Bermondsey Beer Mile. And this guy said, go chat to the brewers, see what they're up to. So this was in May 2022. And we went along. It was a sunny day. Chat to the brewers. Good lads. They gave us some free beer. And they told us one of the biggest issues they face is actually getting rid of their waste. These inner city brewers pay to get rid of their waste stream. So I've got some here. um and so what is that you just shook shake shake it near your microphone so people can hear it so that's a little you've got a jar of something what is that so breweries and whiskey distillers they take malted barley extract the sugar and brewers ferment that into beer and uh distillers ferment and then distill into whiskey or other spirit alcohols and by doing this they're essentially taking malted barley, extracting the sugar, but leaving behind the fibers and the protein.

12:58And so when we first looked into this, we were like, oh my gosh, this is a remarkable resource that people are paying to get rid of. What is in there? About 25 % protein. So we were like, oh, this is brilliant. We found a waste stream that is really undervalued. And protein, four years ago, was top of the market. Plant-based meats, plant-based milks. This is easy. They need a new protein source for vegan-based products. So that was where you first thought you would go? Yeah. So we spent about a month on this. Easy extraction chemistry. Then we just find a way to retail it. And we got to meetings with fuel, being like, oh, we have this new product on the market.

13:36But we spoke to AB and Bev, so the likes who own Budweiser, Stella Ratois. Big brewer. Huge, world's biggest brewer. And they said, look, you could do this. We've seen other entrepreneurs try this. They'd actually backed 110 million to doing just this. in a North American facility. And they said, look, unless you're at huge scale, economics don't really work out. Waste into food is a regulation minefield and it doesn't taste that good. There's kind of variability in the feedstock as well that can knock on, have knock on implications. These plant-based milks are so highly engineered that they want a very consistent protein feedstock.

14:17So at this point, we were back to the drawing board and Entrepreneur First was putting the pressure on us, being like, if you haven't got ideas, break up and find someone else. But we were thinking, we're like, food, protein-based food, it's just a material that we eat. What protein-based materials are there? And there's fur, there's silk, there's wool, there's feathers, and there's leather. Say that again. That's so interesting. They're all protein-based materials. Yeah, fur, silk, wool, feathers, and leather. all protein-based materials um all animal derived and in the modern day we have lots of different alternatives but everything's pretty much plastic derived as an alternative and it just so happened to be that in my field of chemistry there's about 15 years of work coming out of cambridge where they're taking plant-based proteins like um pea proteins and manipulating them to mimic collagen.

15:14Collagen being the protein that makes up leather. So having looked at this research, I was like, oh my gosh, we have a huge protein source that's high quality, so low value. Could we not just take that and create a material out of it? And the materials that are shown up in the research, they're actually using these collagen-like structures to replace plastics. And when we looked into the leather space, there were sort of two main streams of products that were being presented. You have leather and you have plastic leather. And the alternatives were either these synthetic biology approaches, lab-grown leather.

15:47We're still not looking at lab-grown meat just yet. It's too expensive. Regulatory hurdles. And then the other, there's things like mycelium leather, mushroom-grown interleather, inherently a batch-based process, not very suitable for a commodity product like leather that needs to be everywhere. And then there's things like, well, there's a couple of waves of the last two decades we've seen some products come to the market that are a step towards sustainability. Things like apple leather, cactus leather, a variety of different organic substances just ground up into a paste or into a powder mixed with plastic.

16:24So these products are neither biodegradable or recyclable and sometimes quite very much deemed as greenwashing. So Brett at first he thought it was all solved because of these lab-grown approaches, but the more we looked into it, leather was this huge market that hasn't really been disrupted and we started to speak to fashion people and it was clear some of them still love leather it's fine um it's a premium product there is a sort of a very much an attachment to the leather but no one really wants to defend a plastic leather so if we could first knock out plastic leather then we can start to move in on leather um so that's kind of how we came to the idea right and it started with prototypes in my kitchen um so how hard is it to make i mean you say you started with prototypes in the kitchen oh they were they were terrible they were so crude they looked like flapjacks i mean what you're displaying today looks from here like leather yeah um so you've gone on quite a journey it would seem it has that looks absolutely like leather and you say that this is used for upholstery or yeah small leather goods is the main use case at the moment so wallets and things like Yeah, handbags especially.

17:37We've done a couple of things like tennis racket holders. We did a nice whiskey holder as well when we were courting a whiskey brand. That's kind of the market side of it. Speaking to these companies, leather is everywhere, and the sustainability angle that we're proposing here is pretty huge. The no plastic side is very much wanted from the industry. So a lot of leather has plastic? yeah so if you imagine most fashion companies they'll have their leather based product but then they'll also have a plastic leather alternative so whether that's a jacket or handbag so they call it plastic leather yeah pleather but is that what it's called pleather yeah but it's not real leather you know everyone hates it yeah everyone hates it yeah yeah i wouldn't want one of them yeah exactly a pleather jacket yeah i wouldn't want one of them so these these are alternatives yeah potentially but you're pretty early in your journey aren't you so yeah you haven't made new jackets yet not new jackets yet card holders and bags so far um yeah we've got a long way to go we're a team of 15 we have a site a 5 000 square foot site in bermondsey so we're adjacent to the brewery suppliers that's really good so you develop this new business in bermondsey by bm mile yeah totally synergistic right next to your entrepreneur first yeah organization as well well they've moved out now to hoxton so we are we're left behind at Bermondsey but it's a good site it's um it's there's a lot going on there yeah so that's that that places you well and do you deal with most of those breweries now yeah so we mostly work with our main grain suppliers a very cool brewery called Colonel Brewery they're they're kind of like the the brewery that held out as Camden Town and Beaver Town expanded more they're the North London breweries and sold to some of the multinationals like Aby & Bev and Heineken.

19:29Colonel dug their feet in and said, we're going to stay independent. So they're our main supplier. But we do have a really good relationship with the likes of Heineken and Aby & Bev, and we've been able to make materials out of their beer. So where are their breweries? So Aby & Bev, who brew Stella, Artois, and Budweiser, and Corona, they have a massive brewery in the south of Wales and in Lancashire. And so we actually went and collected some of waste grain so this card holder here this is made out of budweiser so we've done the budweiser card holder yeah wow you'd have no idea would you so it's yeah there's no real you'd have no idea it wasn't leather yeah no before this conversation and it's not pleather either well i can recommend your card holder to our listeners thank you i mean it's very nice what do you think team here like it so yes okay that's above lines of cardholder and i think one of the key things is none of this would have ever really been a good idea had there not been the scalability so the feedstock is so abundant humanity's appetite for beer and whiskey is just kind of that's going to continue isn't it it's going to continue even if they say good source of supply yeah even if gen z are drinking less they're still drinking so there's going to be a huge supply it, which means it's really low value.

20:52And the process to make our material is using off-the-shelf equipment. It's just using some smart chemistry. And actually, the research for this was started in the 1920s. So prior to plastics and petrochemical inputs, a lot of research was going into natural or semi-natural products. Petrochemicals come along, plastics are discovered, and we see humanity just replace everything with some sort of plastic. What a shame those other developments didn't get ahead. Yeah. We wouldn't have plastic everywhere. We wouldn't. But now we're waking up to the fact that we have these natural feedstocks. Essentially, the nature is Lego building blocks, and we're using modern understanding of chemistry to piece things together.

21:34Right. So, TJ, you've said you have a PhD in chemistry, but you're now running a startup. You're the CTO, Chief Technology Officer. that requires a very different set of skills doesn't it it does um what's been the biggest shift in mindset you know from scientific research into entrepreneurship for you tj um i think it's just the amount i'm speaking to people so during my phd of course i'm speaking to all my peers and my supervisor but now being on my feet and really trying to sell something um i think that's probably and also being able to tell a story i think is probably the most exciting so the amount of speaking to me that's interesting so you you talk a lot as an entrepreneur yeah and so you need to be a good communicator yeah i think so that's one of your key takeaways yeah yeah definitely and i would always say the key takeaway is just try and chat to everyone really try and um make friends with everyone because you just never know where any opportunity will be so actually i was connected to you because i met a mutual friend a friend's friend at a wedding right and that's how we were connected to him you meet lots of interesting people at weddings i find that too that's very good advice be friendly to everyone yeah i think the world would be better if everyone did that so so you you've taken that approach i mean do you think talented scientists sometimes struggle in building companies or finding their way in building companies?

23:05Yeah, I think it's one of the biggest challenges. There are a lot of scientists with great ideas out there. And the academic environment, though it is very good training for some parts of being an entrepreneur, I do think academia with grant writing, developing your own group, a personal endeavor that you have to really stick by and you have to believe in yourself, they're qualities that track from academia to entrepreneurship. I think one of the big issues is there are so many PhD students or postdocs who have ideas, but they just don't know where to start. There are tech offices opening up in universities, but often they're run by people who haven't actually been entrepreneurs themselves, don't really know where to start.

23:46Sometimes a big issue in academia is the equity take from universities. Universities are getting better at this. Imperial at the moment is killing it right now. So what are they doing? They have reduced the equity take from Imperial for new spin-outs. And they've created several different hubs to get startups up and running. So spin-outs from their community. So what do they take as an equity for that? Oh, I don't know exactly. But I know, so I did my PhD at Oxford. And at the time, they were taking somewhere between 30 % and 50%. And that just hamstrings many startups. So if you wanted to start a business out of Oxford at that time as a scientist, the university will require a big state.

24:25Yeah, and that would just... That makes it harder to raise money, huh? Yeah, it spooks investors immediately. Yeah. What would be reasonable, do you think? I think 10%. Someone was explaining how Imperial has an option where either they take 10 % flat or they take a lower percentage that doesn't get diluted, but they still open their resources to the spin-out. Yeah. And I think that model's working really well for them. I mean, I think encouraging universities, scientists, you know, others of academic disciplines to start businesses and to have an incentive to do that makes total sense. Yeah. Because you're rather like you did with your partner, Entrepreneur First.

25:04You're combining really valuable skills that wouldn't otherwise be combined. Yeah. I mean, your business wouldn't exist if that hadn't happened. Yeah. So Entrepreneur First take an equity cut. So you after the two months, you then pitch to them. um but yeah i would like i'm not too fussed about the equity cut some people would argue it wasn't as good a deal as it could have been i think it's more generous now but having never found brett none of this would have happened i don't know where i would be right now no so so those phds that you're talking about or scientists that are thinking i'd like to do something entrepreneurial where would you direct them what what advice would you give them from your own experience i would look into these programs so you mentioned entrepreneur first who else does it uh there's a There's a group called Zinc.

25:49They're based in London. There's one called Antler, who are also in London. And then there's one that's more sustainability focused called Carbon 13. And they're based in Cambridge. And I think for a lot of scientists who have the ambition and potentially have ideas, it's just the where to start. And trying to do it on your own is incredibly difficult. But if you have a partner who's more commercially focused, you can divvy up responsibilities and you can cover a lot more ground. So to change tack a bit here, TJ, I'm looking at you and in front of you, there are some items that look like leather samples, but they're not, and that they're your products.

26:28And there's a jar of spent grain. Can you do your best to explain to me how the jar of spent grain is turned into what looks like a nice piece of leather? Yeah, definitely. So the first step is the brewers, they take the malted barley, strip away the sugar, and then you're left with the fiber and the protein. So what we're able to do is we collect the grain, we wash it, and then we extract the protein. So the extraction of the protein is sort of a standardized industrial process, the same way they extract pea protein or soy protein, high pH, alkaline conditions, where we can pull the protein into a liquid, at which point we get rid of the husks.

27:09so we have our own waste stream that we're looking at valorizing as well um so you want to turn the husks into something else yeah there's um huge opportunities there we call it fractional valorization if you imagine um a oil refinery goes through fractional distillation where they separate all the oil into different components whether it's for jet fuel or bitumen for roads we can take this natural input and carve it up and take out the different pieces needed Fractional valorization, everyone. I think that's a process of the future. Oh, I hope so. I hope so too. It sounds like a really good idea.

27:43So go on. So you take your protein, you leave your husks. Then what happens? So we have the protein essentially in a soup. And it's in this soup we can start modifying the pH and the temperature. So if you imagine a protein is almost like a wire that's been raveled up, we can change the conditions so it starts to unravel and become a single fiber, a molecular fiber. And we can start to modify the conditions so these fibers start to interact with one another. And in a process called self-assembly, they start to form these connections. And it's those connections that form the basis of our material.

28:20Once that soup is ready... So how do you do that, though? How do you get the soup? So that's the extracting the protein. And we just add in different reagents. Salts. Oh, I see. Increase the temperature. Other chemicals and heat. No other chemicals at this point. Salt is a chemical, isn't it? Salt is a chemical. You are right. I'm not a chemist. Yeah, no, you're right. So, yeah. All right. But apart from that. Apart from that. All non-toxic. And then once that's ready, we add in sort of different reagents. So we add in vegetable oils to keep the material flexible. We add in different natural cross-linkers to help with the strength.

28:55We add in any pigments needed. And actually the color. So this is of your invention. Yeah. You came out with this. Yeah. Recipe. Yeah. we have four patents i wouldn't say i came up with the recipe now so we're a team four patterns four patents for a team of 15 right most of the team are focused on the research and developing the material and when so when did you file your patents the first one was in october 2022 that was one of the first things we ever did we just started to engage with investors and it became clear that for the investors to take you seriously just making sure you got your foot into the ip space was really important.

29:33How long do they last, patterns? Oh, so none of ours have actually been completely filed. So depending on the journey you're taking, you file for a pattern application, which is about a year. Within that time frame, you can make some edits. Then it becomes published, and it sits there for about a year. And then you can either go to international, or you can focus on local geography. So we've gone international. So we're looking at the regions of North America, Europe, and Japan as our main markets. And then within those jurisdictions, I think it's about 18 months from then, if there's any complaints, before it files.

30:17So it's years and years. And then once it's filed, you have a set amount of years. Yeah, how many is that typically? I don't know, actually. As long as possible, I suppose, if you can. After all that work, forget it. Yeah. Well, congratulations. Four patents in four years is pretty good, isn't it? Yeah, I think so. I think so too. All right. So what interest are you getting from other industries in this material? Which industries are most interested at the moment in terms of potential future sales? Yeah. So the most interested industry is the luxury fashion space or the premium fashion. They want to replace plastic in their supply chain.

30:54Some of them also want to just replace leather outright. The problem with modern day leather is the chrome tanning industry, incredibly polluting and directly impacts millions of people in the global south. And most modern day leather is coated in plastic anyway. So it's far removed from that natural material we once knew. So we're working - More people are becoming vegan too, aren't they? And won't want to wear leather, choose leather. Yeah, exactly. And so there's that kind of consumer pressure. Then we have large policy pressure as well. The EU were implementing two policies. One focused on removing materials from deforestation, so that it's going to impact leather.

31:32And the other focuses on end of life, and that's probably going to affect plastic leather. And so both those materials are going to go up in price. And so an alternative that can be made at current price parity with plastic leather that is completely plastic and animal-free is a huge opportunity. So you can do that for the same price? Yeah, in theory, once we're at factory scale. You need to scale up, but in theory. Yeah. You might be able to do it cheaper even. Yeah, we might be able to actually. So is that your next challenge to scale up? Yeah, that's the big focus at the moment is scaling up.

32:09So what are you looking to do? So we really have given ourselves a challenge because we've got the two sides. We've got the extraction of the protein and purification, and then we've got the actual production of the material. So we produce it by taking that soup and pouring it. At the moment, we pour into a tray, and the water evaporates, material sets, and we peel it and cure it. We need to do that onto a conveyor belt. You pour the liquid onto a conveyor belt, liquid evaporates, material sets, and it cures and forms and rolls. How long does it take? So at the moment, it's about 24 hours. Right.

32:42But you want to get this down to about a half hour production. So maybe the protein extraction can take several hours, but the actual rolled roll. So trying to get it from 24 hours to half an hour is your challenge. Yeah, and at scale. There's a lot of science involved in that, isn't there? There is so much science. And actually, now it's taking me far from my expertise. It's taken into the realm of heavy engineering. Right. So are you having to recruit people with that expertise? Or are you learning as you go? We are recruiting people. And finding industry engineers in London is challenging. Brilliant scientists, brilliant commercial people, brilliant designers, but heavy industry engineers.