MM, You ask, where are all the buyers? It is a bit like asking,...

MM, You ask, where are all the buyers? It is a bit like asking, where are the trees in the forest? The buyers do exist but they are not just here. You can almost say, there is no market (for NSP). But how could there be? How would they hear of NuSep? The company is unknown. Good publicity comes only by some great profit result or by some imaginative news generating product. (Sometimes an ASIC enquiry also generates news but not usually of the kind desired.) Do we expect great short term profit results? No. Do we have any excellent new products? Yes, SpermSep, but this is still premature.

In some ways we are in a Catch22 situation. We cannot promote and generate publicity from SpermSep until we complete the clinical trial, but we cannot commence the trial until we already have the funding. The plasma fractionating facility is somewhat similar.

I would not expect any institutions to be buying into NSP at this point. Institutions normally take up stakes at certain identifiable stages of the development of a company. These may be when particular commercial demonstrations are made, such as the plant is set up and actual production has commenced. There are exceptions to this in the form of prospective off-takers who have a direct vested interest in the products, have advanced information, and therefore want to position themselves early.

Getting to commercial demonstration of fractionation is NSP’s hurdle; it costs $30M. I suspect that after building Plant #1 in Singapore, Plant #2 will be no problem as at that point there will be a queue of investors. People love to hear, "It will work exactly like this one, but be more efficient." However, NSP is striving to strike a partial achievement here by having installed the small Pilot PrIME Unit in its Singapore facility.

Potential off-takers, Asian would-be investors and politicians can now be shown the ‘working premises’ in situ. From where are the potential investor leads supposed to come? This has been another difficult issue when one’s own territory and culture, Australia, is considerably different to that of Asia. For this reason leading persons like Goh Thee Woon can be an essential and enormous support for introductions into the Chinese business community. Clubbing him into submission on the other matter would not help delicate diplomacies.

It should be clear that there is no simple magic wand to setting up a significant business enterprise when you start off small. It is an exploratory, slow, step by step process with twists and turns in between.

Juke