Ticker: CMC.V / CWSFF
Listings: TSX Venture Exchange / US OTC / Frankfurt
Website:https://www.cielows.com/
Market Cap: 411 MCAD at time of publication
Share price: 0.63 CAD at time of publication
Industry: Converting waste to renewable fuel

 

September 27 2021: Cielo WasteSolutions Corp today announces that Mr. Gregg Gegunde, Chief Operating Officer of the Company, has also assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer alongside Mr. Don Allan, who will remain President and Chair of the Board of Cielo. Mr. Allan and Mr. Gegunde will share the responsibilities previously undertaken solely by Mr. Allan as the Company continues through its next phase of growth.

Management Team Growth

As President, CEO and Chair of the Board of Directors, Mr. Allan has led the Company through several years of research and development activities, bringing the Company to a point of demonstrating a successful track record of diesel production, which the Company will continue to build on today. Mr. Gegunde, during his tenure as Chief Operating Officer of the Company, has proven to the Company’s management team and Board of Directors his abilities and commitment to the Company, its technology and its objectives. Mr. Allan and Mr. Gegunde will work together with the rest of the management team at Cielo to continue forward with the Company’s research and development and business plans. While the Company has experienced delays in the past in advancing the commercialization of its technology, with its proof of concept in place, the Company believes it is on a clear path to commercialization of its technology on a large scale.

Don Allan, President of Cielo, commented: “We are very lucky to have added a very strong senior management team. Gregg has proven his experience with senior management decisions and his strong engineering skills. Cielo is growing into a much stronger and loftier company, and we are lucky to have Gregg accept the promotion to CEO, I look forward to working with Gregg to continue the substantial increase in Cielo.”

Gregg Gegunde, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer of Cielo, commented: “The current Cielo management team and dedicated Board of Directors were drawn to this organization because of the tremendous potential impact we see from deploying our solution. We truly believe Cielo presents a unique opportunity to help our planet deal with the massive amounts of waste by-product generated by society, but also to provide a greater supply of diesel, which is a cleaner energy source that can help support the ongoing demands of our North American lifestyle. This team is motivated by the opportunity to generate a greener energy supply that improves the sustainability of our planet while also creating the kind of organization capable of generating meaningful returns for our shareholders. I look forward to leading Cielo with Don and the rest of the Cielo team.”

Annual General and Special Meeting

Generally, Cielo has focused in recent months, in particular in line with its transition to the TSX Venture Exchange (“TSX-V”), on attracting qualified and dedicated directors and management to contribute to the advancement of the Company’s objectives as a TSX-V listed issuer. In recent months, the Company has built what the board of directors (the “Board”) and management believe to be a strong and qualified set of individuals. The Board and management may experience additional changes as it continues to grow and adjust to its objectives.

As a result of recent changes to the Board, the Company will be filing an Amended and Restated Notice of the Annual and General Meeting of the Shareholders, to be held on October 21, 2021, and a related Amended and Restated Management Information Circular and Form of Proxy (the “Proxy Materials”), however no other material changes to the Proxy Materials anticipated. The Board is actively engaged in the process of identifying new and suitable candidates who can bring the necessary skills and commitment needed to continue propelling the Company forward and will provide updates as they become available, including in the Amended and Restated Proxy Materials.

Operational Update:

The Company is pleased to also share an update concerning operations:

  • The desulfurization process unit is still on track for warm-up and start-up before the end of September, 2021. Once the unit is on-line, the Company’s primary objectives are to:
    • confirm the ability to produce diesel with a sulfur content that complies with road diesel requirements;
    • monitor, trend and measure system performance parameters for design purposes; and
    • gain an understating of expected operating costs.

While continual operation of the desulfurization unit is not critical to operation, we will operate the unit as required.

  • The existing process at the Company’s facility in Aldersyde, Alberta is currently undergoing design enhancements and system modifications. In the immediate term, attention is being directed to demonstrating the concept of a continuous steady-state operation. This includes the three process blocks of the system that are currently in design: (i) the inlet feed system, (ii) the reactor and, (III) the biomass waste management system. We will be able to update the market in the near future regarding the status, progress and tuning of this facility.
  • Cielo is in the design stages of a scaled-down version (60-litres per hour (“lph”)) of a complete process system that is intended to mimic a full-scale 4,000-lph facility. Based on the current timeline, management anticipates approaching the fabrication and construction phase by Q1-2022 which is planned to be constructed at Cielo’s new, recently announced site at Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. The purpose of this research facility is to achieve a very high degree of detailed performance characteristics, feedstock yields, optimum carrier fluid design, rector design, catalyst experimentation and a detailed material balance for the system. This system is expected to give Cielo the flexibility to experiment with a greater range of pressure and temperature regimes, reactor configurations and catalysts to greatly enhance the quality of the fuel yield. The detailed lab-grade engineering output is expected to facilitate the confidence to successfully design full-scale commercial plants with predictable performance, capital cost expectations and operating cost metrics.
  • The Company has also made improvements in its processes, both in the corporate and operational contexts, taking steps to bolster the underlying strength and integrity of the organization overall.
    • As a responsible and trustworthy organization, Cielo is focused on ensuring the health and safety of its employees, contractors and partners, while also striving to minimize the environmental footprint of its operations. Under the leadership of Mr. Gegunde as COO, improvements to health and safety measures are being employed across Cielo’s operations.
    • Cielo has also established a robust internal engineering team with the goal of minimizing reliance on external engineers or consultants, maintaining control over all intellectual property and processes, and driving down overall costs within the organization. As needed, Cielo has built a professional working relationship with a leading third-party engineering consulting firm to ensure the Company is ideally positioned to execute. Through the development and implementation of new and more rigorous engineering standards, management expects to have stronger business processes and feedback controls, which has been a primary focus over the last quarter and will continue to be a focus as Cielo continues towards commercialization.
  • The opening of the Calgary office allows Cielo to attract additional professionals who are focused on creating effective cost controls, instituting budgeting processes and capturing synergies as a result of Cielo’s team being centralized.

Release of Fiscal Q1, 2022 Results & Conference Call

Cielo anticipates filing its financial statements and management’s discussion and analysis for the three months ended July 31, 2021 on September 28, 2021, and in the interests of enhancing engagement with shareholders, plans to host a conference call and webcast to discuss both the results as well as the recent developments and future outlook for Cielo the morning of September 29, 2021. Further details, including dial-in numbers and webcast links for the event, will be provided in the coming days.

ESGFIRE comment:
We have been caught by surprise with the latest complications in quality of high continous flow and the first delay in the dezulfurization process as well as recent changes to the board.We note a change of communication from the company regarding the Desulfurization process as follows:
In the operational update of 2/9 2021 Cielo stated ” Commisioning of the desulphurization process equipment is expected to be completed by the end of September, 2021.”
In todays (27/9 2021) operational update the communication from Cielo has changed to “The desulfurization process unit is still on track for warm-up and start-up before the end of September, 2021. ” We are unsure what this change in communication originates from, it could be an unintentional change but nontheless we find it concerning. The latest departures of two board members in Andrea Whyte and Mr. George H. Brookman is also concering especially since the two board members joined the company less than 2 months ago. Finally we find it most concerning that Cielo seems to be further away from steady high quality continous flow than we had previously anticipated and the fact that they see the need for a construction of a 60 LPH test device. We have therefore decided to temporarily remove Cielo from the ESGFIRE portfolio until we see that the company reaches continous high quality flow of atleast 500 LPH and a complete success with their Desulfurization commissioning, when these milestones are reached we are positive to once again add the company to the ESGFIRE portfolio, meanwhile we will continue to monitor and report news released by the company.

 

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