Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to AINA Insights, where prominent leaders and influencers shaping the industrial and industrial technology sector discuss topics that are critical for executives, boards and investors. INA Insights is brought to you by INA AI, a firm focused on working with industrial companies to make them unrivaled segment of ONE leaders. To learn more about INA AI, please visit our website at www.ina.AI.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Welcome to Titanium Sector Pulse, the podcast where we dive into pivotal trends, innovations and leadership insights within the industrials and energy sectors. Today we are delighted to have Brian Sio, Vice President of Corporate and Business Development at Elescent Clean technologies. With over 20 years of global experience across Exxon Mobil, McKinsey and Halliburton, Brian has an exceptional track record of leading strategy, operations and growth initiatives. At Ellison, he drives strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions and business development efforts to advance clean technologies that redefine sustainability in industrial processes. Brian, thank you so much for joining us. Let's explore the dynamic intersection of clean technologies and business transformation.
All right, so Brian, to start with, given your vast experience across the globe, the first question we have is how have regional differences in regulations and energy parities influenced the adoption of clean technologies across Middle East, Asia and usa?
[00:01:41] Speaker C: First of all, thank you for having me here. I'm truly, truly honored to be doing this.
I think in regards to this question, I think it's very difficult to answer this question in generic terms without going into specific sectors or specific countries. I mean, if you look across the landscape, there are a lot of differences even within a region, a country in the regions, because they have different priorities, they may be on a different state of the energy transition journeys, different attributes, things like whether they are net energy importer or not, whether they have sun, the sun always shining. And there's multitude of factors. So it's very, very difficult to answer that question in generality. Right. But one thing I would say though is that at the end of the day, businesses make economic decisions. So it is not out of the goodwill of their heart they're going to do a certain thing, but they make economic decisions, decisions.
And a lot of these clean technologies at this stage would need some form of carrot or stake, right? Carrot meaning some subsidies and stake meaning some regulations or oversight. And if not, the projects will already be done.
So I think this is a very long way of saying it really depends. But you have to look at a specific sector and a specific country.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Got it, got it. And again, I think another factor you mentioned, the characteristics, right? So the global ecosystem, right. We're talking about climate change and that has accelerated and shifted industrial policy and regulations as well. So what role do clean technologies play in decarbonizing hard to abate sectors? And has that influenced kind of how adoption has gone and where the carrots and sticks are placed as well?
[00:03:42] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I believe technology is probably the most critical role in this whole equation. Yes, there's a lot of things involved, but technology plays a really critical role. I mean, if you look back at the history of civilization, right. All the global challenges in the past has somewhat been addressed by technology. You know, food shortages, diseases, productivity and so. But I think this time round, in this particular challenge, it is so difficult because I think it requires a multi faceted solution. You need solution all across the energy value chain, you need solution all across different sectors. So you're not dealing with one sector.
And so there is going to be a lot. It's not one technology, it's going to be many technology in many parts of the value chain across many industries that make this challenge so difficult. But at the same time so interesting, right?
[00:04:46] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's a really exciting time to be at the forefront of technology in this sector.
So diving deeper into that topic. Right, so let's look at Elsent's role in clean technologies. Right. So Ellison offers advanced solutions like sulfuric acid production and alkylation technologies. How do these align with industries? Push for decarbonisation and efficiency?
[00:05:08] Speaker C: So specific to those two technologies that you mentioned, we are working on, we're constantly working on a more energy efficient process, how to recover as much usable energy as possible in the least amount of capex that you have to put in. So we're constantly tweaking that, we're constantly trying to see whether we can optimize it in different situation. But beyond those technologies that you mentioned, we also have technology to reduce emissions. We have a great scrubbing technology, we have a very good mis elimination technology so that we can help control socks, nox, particulates. And so we've been pushing into new sectors like green hydrogen, green steel. Yeah, so it's kind of a multiple avenue where we're trying to help.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: All right, very helpful. So just following up from that, can you share a recent success story that highlights Ellison's impact on clean technology adoption?
[00:06:17] Speaker C: Well, the one that I would say is closest to what I deem a pretty interesting success story is as I mentioned, green hydrogen.
So the story around this is actually quite interesting.
This opportunity actually kind of landed on our lap. So I mentioned a bit earlier, we have a mis elimination technology that is Very renowned in the industries that it plays in. And we have like 50 years of experience in this. So a very deep bench of knowing what to do in mis elimination and in, in this, this technology actually plays out in one, one key application in the coral alkaline space. I mean, to the, to the non technical, all it does is we try to produce chlorine through electrolysis.
And someone went like, hey, you know, this is very similar to green hydrogen. You know, you're hydrolyzing water with some sort, you know, to get hydrogen. And it's very similar to. Because the electrolyzer that they use is very similar. In fact, it's the same one with some tweaks to the one used in the chlor alkaline space. And we are a leader in that space for mis elimination. And then somebody said, hey, why not just do this for green hydrogen? So the team went in, we tried to understand what's the problem they're trying to solve in this space.
Long story short, it works out really fine.
So we move into the space and then we started to try to expand from there. Okay, if we put in this technology, can we go into separation, which is kind of a wider part of the value chain, and then can we go into purification? So recently we launched the separation package which we termed EasySep. And then we are now looking into purification. I will say it's not really a success story yet, even though we are actually, if you look across all the capacity of green hydrogen project, we are in more than half of them.
But we are in those big projects. Right. And the green hydrogen space is a lot of very small projects. And at this point of time, we are not really touching that small projects. So my team is trying to work the awareness issue and hopefully you'll see us more, more and more in this space.
[00:08:44] Speaker B: All right, that's pretty interesting. So I think, given that, as you mentioned, that the opportunity fell on your lab. Right. So let's go into more of conscious decision making on how you drive strategy. So how do you identify strategic opportunities that align with both Ellison's growth and the broader clean energy movement?
[00:09:05] Speaker C: So I think of this quite simply. I mean, after kind of having experienced that opportunity, I mean, I take a really simplistic approach. Right.
I look at industrial verticals as well as horizontal capabilities. Right. So Allison is very big in actually the two technologies that you talk about, the alkylation space and the sulfuric acid space. So we are constantly thinking, what more can we bring into that space? We are key licenses of key licenser of technology and we bring some proprietary equipment. And so we're looking to see whether we can broaden that portfolio of equipment. Can we go into the valve space? You know, can we go into maybe the certain design of the pumps, you know, things like that. Right. So going expansion vertically. Right. And then we are also thinking about, hey, some of our equipment, like the green hydrogen example. Right. Can we kind of bring it across, like a capability to other industries? So, yeah, so vertical, horizontal, very simple.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Got it. But you're focusing basically on adjacencies. Right. Instead of like, hey, this is a new market space, white space. Let's develop this versus where can we broaden our. Very interesting. All right, so. And I think one question that comes to mind, given the current market scenarios, right. Digital transformation is. Is the buzzword, Right. It's shaping a lot of industries. How is elecent leveraging technology to drive innovation and improve customer outcomes?
[00:10:40] Speaker C: Well, digital, we have a few exciting space, some more conventional, some a little bit more on the edge. So let me talk about the conventional one first. Right. The conventional ones are things like we have advanced simulations for operator trainings we have, which we should call ots. We have, we have a customized digital visualization for our customers to help them look after the plants. We are soon to embark on a VR effort to help train operators which valve to turn. What if they hear certain sounds, Kind of adding one more sensory to the training. But the one that I'm most excited about, which is more on the edge of stuff, is we are working with a partner to apply AI onto a. Onto a plant operations.
So thinking of us throwing in all our operating procedures, think of us keying in response to our experts, keying in response to a certain plant condition. Have you checked this? Have you checked that? So we are really documenting that down, converting it into an AI model so that especially most of our customers are in far flung areas, right. Where it's very hard to fly SME down to the middle of nowhere. Right. And the first line of defense, they can go to this. And when they see that thing, they click on it and it says, okay, have you checked this reference to these procedures? And then you can click on the procedures so you kind of help them get through the first hurdle. And we're constantly building that model to make it better and also expanding it. Today is in one of our technology, but then we want to kind of bring it to the rest. So very excited about that. And then you probably know, like, with a lot of industrial players, our folks are retiring, right. All the nice experience, 40 years of experience are all residing in the brains of somewhere. And then hopefully we, we can kind of document this down and be able to drive a better level of performance. Right?
[00:12:58] Speaker B: Yeah. No way. Interesting. I think that AI solution, I think people are finding really unique uses on how they can leverage an AI model as first line of defense, as you mentioned, and be the first interface that actually your customers interact with. It's very interesting. So going from what we are driving today to just a peek into the future, what emerging technologies do you believe will have the greatest impact on cleantech over the next five years?
[00:13:29] Speaker C: Well, I think specific to cleantech in the energy space, there were a lot of investment previously on the electron side of the business. That is wind, solar, batteries, electric cars. So they were all dealing with the electron side. I think the last few years you've seen and that there have been a great impact on that. Right. You can see the uptake of all these technology just kind of getting more and more. But in the last few years you see actually a lot more investment on the molecule side and investment in green hydrogen, green ammonia, carbon capture sustainable fuels, many forms of that low carbon material. So they're very, very exciting. And some of them are almost science fiction at this point. Right. But, but and I mean one, one of the ones that we kind of play in that space is esaf, right. Or synthetic aviation fuel where basically they take carbon dioxide and hydrogen, the green hydrogen and through FT process. I mean I don't want to go through all the acronyms.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:40] Speaker C: But through several process you can actually end up with synthetic jet fuel or synthetic plastics just from that. Right. But obviously it's very expensive and obviously they are still fine tuning. Actually we are part of the process fine tuning the formulation. But it's already possible today and as you can imagine, jet fuel, I mean jet is not going to be electrified anytime soon.
You're not going to run jet on hydrogen or rather it's pretty scary to think about that.
So things like this are really exciting because they are drop inside. They are using existing infrastructure. We just need to work the cost down. Right. I say just. But it's a big task.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I completely understand just getting a broader picture and looking at industry challenges and opportunities in general, industrial companies often face cost complexity and regulatory barriers when transitioning to cleaner processes. And we have seen this across industries. How does Ellison help navigate these challenges?
[00:15:47] Speaker C: Right.
If you look at all of these transition, the hard fact is that they are usually large capital projects involving different partners of the value chain. And most of the times with marginal economics, even with subsidies. Right. So I think the only, I mean what we do and to try to help them get over the hurdle is really to help this project meet their intended objectives in terms of cost, in terms of schedule, in terms of the performance.
Alison, we recently did a customer survey across all customers and the word that comes out a lot is our quality and reliability.
So that's something we'll continue to work on. We have a very, very strong global supply chain. So regardless of what happens in the supply chain business, we can deliver.
And also the other thing is we have great after sales support because most of our customer has been reversed for the last 40, 50, even 100 years because we don't just sell equipments and kind of lay our hands off.
We have after sales support, we have proven products and then hopefully that will help them be able to manage the projects better and get them through the finish line.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: Got it. And you mentioned that Ellison works with the customers to help them meet their cost and timelines that they need for their projects. Right. So what could be some of the examples that Ellison actually has helped with on their customers to meet those timelines and those cost targets that they've had?
[00:17:34] Speaker C: Well, recently we had a customer some incidents in their plant. And because of some of their incidents, their equipment came down like that. And obviously with all industry a second is worth a million. Right. And they're not operating. So they came to us and what we did was we managed to move projects around and we managed to because again, a lot of this equipment has long lead time. We managed to kind of project plan around that and maybe deliver this equipment first before another equipment to help them up and running faster. We then deploy a team straight onto the ground to see that the damage that was done. And how do we rectify some of this?
With the aim to get the customer up and running as quickly as possible and then after that we work with them on the how do we prevent this from happening again?
So I mean we really take a partnership approach to a lot of these. Not a lot actually to all our customer interaction.
We don't just want to sell them one time and call it quits. Right.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
Very interesting. Thank you so much for that. And I think another industry wide question which is of interest. Right. So energy markets are becoming increasingly volatile. So how would you position industrial companies so that they could remain competitive? Right. What would be your advice to them?
[00:19:08] Speaker C: This is a hard one. This is really a hard one because you know, the funny thing is I was Hired into Halliburton to think of a growth plan and growth strategy for one of the business lines. And this was in 2014, June, July and as some of you might be aware, in September was one of the crash and two months into the job. And we like scrape all the plants, throw it away. Now let's think of how we survived this from a growth strategy. It became a third strategy. How do we hike in anyway?
Since then there were at least another three or four of these really crazy up and down. So I think the key is really to, I mean the volatility will always be there. It's the nature of the business because of the big capital intensive long lead time projects. Right. So if the supply cannot come in quick, you are always going to have the up and down. Right. So it is indeed very, very challenging. The only thing I can say is where I see companies succeed is that when they do investment they take a true cycle mindset. They don't think about when times are good, when times are bad, they stick to the guns and say this is what we're going to do. Think of likes of Exxons, they pivot, don't get me wrong, they pivot, but they don't pivot on a dime based on the price of energy. They take a true mindset and they go, but having said that, invest with a true cycle mindset. But you have to be very nimble in your operations. That is when you turn it down. Can we run this with 3% instead of 4 and make sure you can adjust without compromising safety? Obviously sounds very straightforward, but it's super hard to do.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Now that agility is very difficult to build in. Right. Especially when you're chasing growth.
[00:21:23] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: I think that's a good North Star to aim for. Going to your vision for the future. Right. So as a leader at Elescent, what is your vision for company's role in shaping the future of clean technologies?
[00:21:37] Speaker C: Well, I would say to really stay the cost in terms of delivering quality and reliability in our technology.
So that is, that is not a compromisable philosophy. And then to continuously look for spaces where we have a value proposition, be it in the vertical or in the horizontal, as I mentioned earlier.
And lastly, I want to conclude with an open invitation to anybody who thinks that we could actually partner with them to add more. We are always looking for partners that can help us double our value proposition or enhance our value proposition to the market.
[00:22:22] Speaker B: Now that's great. Thank you so much Brian for giving us your time and sharing your thoughts. We really appreciate it. And I think I at least personally learned a lot about the clean energy market. So again, thank you so much for your time.
[00:22:34] Speaker C: Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Mohit. Thank you for having me here.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: All right, thanks.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to INA Insights. Please visit Aina AI for more podcasts, publications and events on developments shaping the industrial and industrial technology sector.
