A Week of Announcements and Activity

Star Scientific was the “star” at the Asia-Pacific Hydrogen 2023 Summit & Exhibition produced by the Sustainable Energy Council (SEC) and in partnership with the Australian Hydrogen Council in Sydney, on 26th and 27th of October 2023. It was a major week of announcements and activities, and here is a summary below.

High-level Visits

Our big week began with a high-level business delegation from the German-Australian Chamber of Industry and Commerce, many of the delegates were representing businesses from the Stade Region of Lower Saxony, Germany. The delegates were given a briefing on HERO® and a tour of Star Scientific’s research and development facility, before moving on to a cruise of the Port of Newcastle, where our Deputy CEO, Matt Hingerty, joined them. We were very grateful that our local State Member of Parliament, David Meehan MP, visited us to officially welcome the guests.

On Wednesday we were honoured to be joined by the Governor of the State of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, and her Environment Department Cabinet Secretary, James Kenney, along with senior Government officials for a tour of the facility, including a live demonstration of HERO®.

Hydrogen Summit Day 1

In a first for Star Scientific, we took out an exhibition booth, which was the first outing for our demonstration HERO® unit. This proved to be a great device for our Global Head of Research, Steve Heaton (and the rest of us) to explain how HERO® works to the exhibition attendees.

During the conference, we made our first major announcement. After New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham appeared on a conference panel, she was joined on stage by Star Scientific’s Global Group Chair, Andrew Horvath, and they jointly announced that it is our intention to establish our first US facility in Albuquerque, USA. Much media activity followed, particularly on the US side, and the volume of visitors to our exhibition booth increased dramatically.

Hydrogen Summit Day 2

The day commenced with a keynote speech from our Global Group Chair, Andrew Horvath. One of the things we noticed at the World Hydrogen 2023 Summit & Exhibition earlier in the year, and in the earlier panels of this conference, was negative sentiment towards the energy transition. This negative sentiment was being fuelled by local communities “pushing back” on wind, solar, hydro and transmission projects.

Andrew’s speech countermanded this sentiment. His key point, using HERO® as an example, was that scientific innovation would get us around some of these political issues. His point was that the renewable energy sources of the future may look very different to the solar farms, wind towers and transmission lines of today.

He also took the opportunity to announce our second pilot project for Central Coast packaging company, TrendPac, which is also part of the Central Coast Hydrogen Food Cluster.

Shortly following Andrew’s presentation, Steve Heaton and Matt Hingerty gave a slightly more detailed technical run-down on HERO®, and its commercial uses on the H2-Tech Series stage.

These speeches further increased the volume of people coming up to our stand, and the team were kept busy for the rest of the conference, fielding inquiries, and making appointments for further discussion.

All in all, it was a very satisfying week for us, and we’d like to thank everyone involved.