This past month, we reached a critical milestone: The Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change issued their Renewable Energy Approval to ZooShare!  In addition to this, we made good progress in resolving the challenges related to securing our feedstock; And learned about the discounts that potential equipment suppliers can offer us.

Feedstock

As we stated last month, a meeting with our grocery partner revealed the path forward to resolving the remaining challenges and getting the contract done.  Over the last 4 weeks, we have been working on determining how many of the waste management companies operating in this market have the ability and willingness to pick-up organics from our partner, remove contaminants and drop off the material at our biogas plant.  Early conversations have been positive and we are working up an Expression of Interest for potential suppliers to sign in order to further support our research and give confidence to our partner.  We plan to have as many of these signed as possible in preparation for a September meeting with our partner.

In addition, we continue discussions with other waste producers and waste management companies, ensuring that ZooShare is able to get the supply it needs for the best possible price.

Bond Sales

Since we began taking names and pledges for a waiting list, we have 121 individuals and total pledges of between $561,000 and $762,000.    If you would like to get on our official waiting list, please fill out the form here (make sure to check the “Yes, I am already registered as a ZooShare member” box).

We are currently reviewing and revising the Offering Statement with the intention of renewing it, and at this point, if we decide to sell more bonds, it looks like they will be available in September or October.  Stay tuned for more information on this.

Renewable Energy Approval (REA)

We received the final version of the REA on August 28th.

Digestate (fertilizer) sale/disposal

This past month, we continued to work through the details and terms of our final agreement with Prongineer Ltd regarding the processing of liquid digestate and look forward to getting that done.

Biogas equipment and financing

Over the last 4 weeks, we began to reach out to the different companies that responded to our preliminary request for quotes to ask if they were able to provide further discounts in exchange for marketing profile, and if they had financing packages to offer.  Some have responded already and we are waiting for the others to get back to us, but from our early conversations, the response has been positive and in line with our needs.  We look forward to making decisions in this area in the next 4-8 weeks now that the REA is in hand.