Inauguration with dinner

On November 5th, I was, together with two more from class, invited to participate at the inauguration of GraphmaTech´s new facility. GraphmaTech is where we plan to do our master thesis.

GraphmaTech is a fairly new company that produces graphene. They have managed to solve the agglomeration problem that graphene producers and users have been struggling with until now. This has made GraphmaTech a great player in this industry and they are growing fast.

Their product, Aros Graphene®, is available for purchase and is part of a large number of industrial projects. They have already managed to solve a good number of industrial problems. Graphene is truly shown to be a great engineering material.

The inauguration started with a mingle where we met a number of interesting people. We had a long conversation with two persons from “Uppsala Kommun” that were involved with startups and university relations in some fashion. We talked about how we could improve the relationship between students and companies, both small new and big established ones. They gave us information about an event coming up in nanotech, held at Norrlands nation. The man from the municipality invited the three of us and we managed to convince him to provide seats for more of us from Eskolan.

We also presented ourselves to the employees of GraphmaTech. When we told them we are starting there in January they all were a bit confused since the CFO, who we have been in contact with, had not told them yet but they all were positive about what we told we are going to do for them during our master thesis.

During the evening we were divided into groups to receive a tour of their facilities. We were shown their new production line, small but effective. They presented a few problems they are solving and a few more they aspire to solve with their Aros Graphene®. They showed their 3D-printable conductive plastic and demonstrated a piano they constructed with keys of polymer containing Aros Graphene® abling them to sense resistivity, since graphene is highly conductive, and turn that into a note when a human finger touches it.

When we got to the strategic room, where they were to display their goals of the company, we entered the office of Mamoun Taher, the CEO. When Björn, the CFO, had shown us what they aspire to be in the future, I noticed som notes hanging on the wall above Mamoun´s desk.

Here I see a lot of statements and words we have talked about in class. For example “value creation”, “Do you 110% believe in this?”, “innovation”, “prototype it” and so on. When I see this, everything we have talked about in class seems much more applicable. It has mostly been words before, but here I realize that it is actually usable information and realizations we have been given.

The evening ends with a nice buffet dinner and a small chat with a former student of chemical engineering (same major as me), and an employee of ABB. Not discussing work, business or anything. Just having a great conversation about the night.