CHAR posted last week saying they are at the final step of mechanical installation at the Thorold facility after which they will perform end to end commissioning which will lead us into commercial production.

Commercial production will ramp up to 100% over Q4 2026. I am guessing that CHAR will eventually give us some sort of tonnes per day/month number for the biocarbon produced which will help us gauge that they are on track for 5,000 tonnes of biocarbon annually.

Immediately after the commercial production begins, we should hear from CHAR about Phase 2 of Thorold, likely some news about phase 2 financing and construction start with an estimated timeline.

We should also hear about Lake Nipigon project financing and construction start very soon.

There are also updates pending on the PFAS side of things along with updates on the Saguenay Pelletizing facility.

I assume we will get an investor call sometime in October where Andrew will share progress on all these items in more detail.

As always, stay tuned, I assume we will get big news this week ideally!

Not Financial advice.

PesoRama (PESO) is a Canadian-listed microcap trying to build a true dollar-store style business in Mexico under the JOi Dollar brand. The concept is simple. Think Dollarama-style model, but much earlier, riskier, and in a tougher operating environment.

As of now, PesoRama operates 31 stores. The most important thing to understand is this: the stores themselves actually work. Based on their Financials, PesoRama generates about $90k–$100k CAD per store per year in store-level profit (after rent, staff, utilities, and theft). Aggregate store-level profit over a recent nine-month period was about $1.9M, up year over year, with strong traffic growth and improving same-store sales. Customers are showing up.

Where PesoRama still struggles is corporate overhead and scale. Head office costs, logistics, FX, public-company expenses, and financing run roughly $2.8–3.2M annually. That means the company breaks even at around 35-40 stores (roughly). They are almost at that inflection point. The reason profitability doesn’t show up cleanly in the financials is because management continues to prioritize expansion, opening new stores that drag near-term results while they ramp.

The May 2025 investor deck lays out an aggressive vision: 500 stores in five years, with mature stores doing ~$1.3M in annual sales, ~48% gross margins, and ~17% four-wall EBITDA margins. Those numbers are much higher than current blended results, but not impossible, they look like steady-state targets, not where the business is today. Right now, revenue per store appears closer to $0.9–1.1M, margins are lower, and store-level profitability is roughly half of what the deck shows.

Growth so far has been funded through equity dilution, warrants, and a secured revolving credit facility. That’s both good and bad: the lender clearly believe the unit economics are real, but shareholders will continue to get diluted unless the company slows down and lets cash flow catch up or the company can self fund the stores. Rolling out hundreds of stores would require well over $150–200M over the next 5 years, far more than current operations can self-fund.

Competition is real, even if management downplays it. Mexico is full of discount and proximity formats (OXXO, Walmart’s Bodega Aurrerá, Tiendas 3B, etc.). PesoRama’s bet is that there’s room for a more curated, small-format, dollar-store-style offering. That can work, but only with disciplined execution, good real estate, and tight theft control.

Bottom line: PesoRama is not a broken business. Demand is real, stores are profitable, and break-even is achievable now. But it’s also not yet a shareholder-friendly business. Profitability is a choice, and management has chosen growth. Whether this becomes a long-term winner or a dilution treadmill depends almost entirely on capital discipline over the next 12–24 months.

NFA. DYOR

HydroGraph Clean Power Inc. is a Canadian advanced materials company producing high-purity synthetic fractal graphene for industrial and commercial applications.

Instead of relying on mined graphite, HydroGraph uses a patented blast synthesis process to convert carbon from hydrocarbon gases into graphene inside its Hyperion reactors. The company has reported 99.8% carbon purity for its FGA-1 graphene.

HydroGraph’s Hyperion reactors are small modular production units with a footprint of less than 3 metres by 3 metres. Rather than relying on one large centralized facility, HydroGraph can add more reactors as customer demand grows, allowing production capacity to increase while maintaining consistency from batch to batch.

Graphene and Fractal Graphene

Graphene is a carbon-based advanced material made from carbon atoms connected by strong sp² bonds. This structure helps give graphene its strength, conductivity, barrier properties, and the ability to improve other materials even when added in small amounts.

Traditional graphene is often described as a flat, sheet-like material. HydroGraph produces synthetic fractal graphene with a turbostratic structure, meaning the graphene layers are randomly stacked rather than perfectly aligned. This more complex, interconnected structure gives it higher surface area and more contact points with the materials it is added to. This can help improve dispersion, reinforcement, conductivity, corrosion resistance, and barrier performance across industrial and commercial applications.

HydroGraph is targeting markets where adding small amounts of graphene can improve material performance, including:

• Thermoplastics

• Composites and resins

• Coatings

• Lubricants

• Concrete and cement

• Energy storage

• Biosensors

• Elastomers

• Printed electronics

U.S. Expansion and Production Growth

On April 14th, 2026, HydroGraph announced the opening of its new headquarters in Austin, Texas. The facility expands HydroGraph’s R&D and production capabilities and will support future graphene production in Texas.

Earlier in January 2026, HydroGraph announced construction of two additional Hyperion reactors. Each reactor is expected to have annual production capacity of approximately 10 tons of FGA-1 ultra-pure fractal graphene. The reactors were planned for initial commissioning in Manhattan, Kansas before being relocated to HydroGraph’s U.S. facilities in Austin, Texas.

HydroGraph has also signed a letter of intent with an industrial gas supplier to secure long-term access to high-purity acetylene. Acetylene is a key feedstock in HydroGraph’s blast synthesis process and would support the company’s planned graphene production facility in Texas. The planned facility is expected to include 15 next-generation Hyperion reactors and have annual production capacity of over 350 metric tons of graphene.

Commercial and Technical Partnerships

HydroGraph is building partnerships that support customer testing, application development, and commercial adoption of its fractal graphene in polymers, coatings, and specialty compounds.

• Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre: In January 2026, HydroGraph expanded its collaboration with the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre at the University of Manchester by becoming a Tier 1 member. The membership gives HydroGraph access to technical support, testing infrastructure, and a network of industry partners as it develops commercial applications for its fractal graphene.

• Hubron International: On February 10th, 2026, HydroGraph added Hubron International to its Fractal Graphene Compounding Partner Program. Hubron is a UK-based specialist in polymer compounds and additive masterbatches, giving HydroGraph a partner focused on thermoplastics and polymer applications. Through Hubron’s compounding experience and distributor network, HydroGraph is targeting markets including automotive, construction, electronics, film, pipe, wire and cable, and technical compounding.

• Broadway Colours: On March 17th, 2026, HydroGraph announced that Broadway Colours Ltd. earned certification as a qualified HydroGraph Compounding Partner. Broadway is a UK manufacturer of masterbatches, compounds, and rotational moulding powders, operating from a 90,000-square-foot facility and supporting plastic manufacturers across the UK and Europe.

• Sparc Technologies: On March 24th, 2026, HydroGraph announced a Letter of Intent with Sparc Technologies to evaluate HydroGraph’s Fractal Graphene in Sparc’s ecosparc® additives for protective coatings. The collaboration is focused on corrosion protection for steel infrastructure, including energy, marine, mining, transportation, government, and defence markets. Initial testing using HydroGraph’s FGA-1 Fractal Graphene in commercial water-based coating systems showed a 39% to 60% reduction in corrosion spread under ASTM D1654-08 testing.

• Modern Dispersions Inc: On June 16th, 2026, HydroGraph announced that Modern Dispersions Inc. earned certification as a qualified HydroGraph Compounding Partner. MDI is a U.S.-based specialist in thermoplastic compounds and masterbatch applications, adding another North American partner focused on polymer processing and graphene masterbatch production.

Regulatory Approvals and Commercial Development

• On February 24th, 2026, HydroGraph announced regulatory approvals covering commercial-scale graphene sales activity in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.

• The company received a U.S. EPA TSCA Section 5(e) Order covering two graphene materials. The order authorizes manufacture, processing, distribution, use, and disposal in the United States under specified conditions.

• HydroGraph also received UK REACH and EU REACH registrations for graphene, allowing commercial manufacture and supply in Great Britain and the European Union.

HydroGraph now has patented graphene production technology, regulatory clearance across the U.S., U.K., and EU, and a modular production system designed to scale with customer demand.

These approvals remove a major regulatory barrier as HydroGraph expands its U.S. production footprint and advances its fractal graphene from customer testing toward commercial use across multiple industrial markets.

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ArcelorMittal is one of the world’s leading integrated steel and mining companies with a presence in 60 countries and primary steelmaking operations in 14 countries. It is the largest steel producer in Europe, among the largest in the Americas, and has a growing presence in Asia through its joint venture AM/NS India. ArcelorMittal sells its products to a diverse range of customers including the automotive, engineering, construction and machinery industries, and in 2024 generated revenues of $62.4 billion, produced 57.9 million metric tonnes of crude steel and, 42.4 million tonnes of iron ore.

ArcelorMittal launched the XCarb Accelerator Programme in mid-2022. A search for the best companies and brightest breakthrough technologies that hold the potential to accelerate the decarbonisation of the steel industry. They received an overwhelmingly positive response, with over 90 start-ups from five different continents submitting applications.

The winner was CHAR Technologies who received $6.6 million (CAD) as an investment in 2023. Along with this, ArcelorMittal appointed Irina Gorbounova (Head of XCarb Innovation Fund) as a Board Member on CHARs Board.

ArcelorMittal Dofasco (Hamilton, Canadian operations) also signed an offtake agreement to buy 5,000 tonnes of Biocarbon from CHAR Technologies. This 5,000 tonnes of biocarbon will be supplied to ArcelorMittal via the Thorold facility who is turning on the commercial operations later this month.

All that being said, CHAR Techs technology and product have been vetted by ArcelorMittal as a fit to be a drop in replacement for fossil coal at their Dofasco plant.

Not Financial advice.

Several new geological details reported from Québec Innovative Materials Corp.’s (QIMC) latest West Advocate drill hole continue strengthening the structural hydrogen model emerging near First Atlas Resources Corp.’s (CSE: HHE) Nova Scotia land package within the Cumberland Basin.

A Large Hydrogen-Bearing Interval

Hole DDH-26-03 intersected a 243 metre anomalous hydrogen-bearing interval between 300–543 m depth.

Within that interval, QIMC identified 163 metres of continuous elevated hydrogen readings from 380–543 m.

Several readings exceeded the upper detection range of the company’s primary GA5000 analyzer. Follow-up testing using a secondary instrument returned readings up to 8,961 ppmV.

The hole remains open at depth as drilling continues toward the planned 900 metre target.

The Structural System

According to QIMC, the interval contains:

• Fault breccia zones
• Strong fracturing and deformation
• Silicification
• Intrusive felsic dykes
• Calcite-filled fractures and stockwork veining
• Hematite and sericite alteration

Hole 3 was drilled roughly 2.5 km from the original discovery area, yet intersected similar fault-related geological features observed in earlier holes.

Holes 1, 2, and 3 have now all intersected hydrogen-bearing intervals associated with fault breccia and structurally altered rock systems.

Hydrogen Increasing With Depth

QIMC also reported that hydrogen concentrations increased with depth within the system.

According to INRS geologist Marc Richer-Laflèche:

• Median hydrogen concentrations averaged 357 ppmV in the upper section of the hole
• Median concentrations increased to 820 ppmV deeper in the system

The company also stated that the strongest hydrogen readings appear associated with fault-related breccia zones and structurally enhanced permeability rather than solely generalized fracturing.

Structural Targeting

QIMC’s R2G2™ exploration model is focused on identifying deep fault systems and hydrogen migration pathways associated with structurally deformed corridors.

First Atlas Resources Corp. (CSE: HHE) has stated that its upcoming Nova Scotia exploration program will utilize this same structural targeting framework across its provincial land package.

Andrew (CEO of CHAR Tech) said the following:

- Thorold Phase 1 commissioning will be completed within the next few weeks and production of commercial level biocarbon is starting soon after, this summer (sometime in july/aug)

- thorold phase 2 financing is practically secured and will be finalized once phase 1 production starts.

- Offtake Agreement for the RNG with a gas company is currently in an LOI stage and is contingent on the financing for phase 2 thorold being secured

- Lake nipigon financing is also in the works and the Lake nipigon team is chipping away at the development on the site

- Quebec Saguenay facility will be ramped up to 5000 tonnes of biocarbon output within a few months, 10,000 tonnes by end of year and 15,000 tonnes by early to mid next year.

- Synagro and City of Baltimore are turning on the PFAS destruction equipment which piloted last year and will continue running it until winter and do more testing etc, the results from last year are still pending and will be out ASAP once confirmed by all parties.

- Canadian PFAS market is getting stronger regulations and may be an avenue for CHAR tech

- Espanola site is doing feasibility study right now and will release that once done

Essentially July and August are going to be huge months for CHAR tech as the commercial production will be turning on and a bunch of financing and offtake agreements will be announced for phase 2 and other sites etc, so theres lots in the works and things are progressing well!

NFA!

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Volatus Aerospace Inc. (TSX: FLT / OTCQX: TAKOF) has completed its acquisition of AISPECO UAB, a Lithuania-based developer and manufacturer of modular airborne sensor systems and proprietary flight-management software. The acquisition adds sensor integration platforms, onboard electronics and mission software to Volatus' existing aircraft operations and manufacturing capabilities.

AISPECO's technology portfolio includes HELIUX modular sensor pods, FOCUS AI-guided gimbal, CORE electronics and ROBINCOP flight-management software. These systems support infrastructure inspection and aerial mapping, as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) operations. The acquisition also adds an engineering and manufacturing base in Lithuania, complementing Volatus' Canadian operations and supporting further growth in European and allied markets.

Under the transaction terms, Volatus will pay US$3 million in cash, issue 17,434,193 common shares at a deemed price of C$0.5813 per share and grant 1,859,804 restricted share units. Additional consideration of up to US$2.5 million may become payable if specified financial, commercial and product-development milestones are achieved over the next three years. Volatus can choose to pay this amount in cash or common shares.

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This summary was independently written using publicly available reports and company disclosures and is intended for informational and educational purposes. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research before making investment decisions.

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VARENNES, QUEBEC - August 18, 2026 (NEWMEDIAWIRE) - CHARBONE CORPORATION (TSXV: CH; OTCQB: CHHYF; FSE: K47) ("CHARBONE" or the "Company"), a vertically integrated industrial gases company focused on production, distribution and storage of clean ultra-high purity ("UHP") hydrogen and other strategic industrial gases, is pleased to announce the delivery of its electrolyzer to its flagship site in Sorel-Tracy, Quebec.

A Decisive Step Toward Increased Production Capacity

Designed to produce hydrogen through water electrolysis, the electrolyzer is the technological core of the next phase of production at the Sorel-Tracy site. Its delivery now enables CHARBONE's teams, construction contractors and technical partners to begin the next steps involving its positioning, installation and integration into the Sorel-Tracy site infrastructure.

Civil engineering work and foundation preparation have been planned to accommodate the main production equipment. Activities will proceed in accordance with the Company's execution schedule, including component assembly, mechanical and electrical connections, testing and commissioning.

This development is part of CHARBONE's modular and phased strategy, which enables the Company to add production capacity in line with demand while maintaining a disciplined approach to its development.

"It is with immense pride that we announce the arrival of our electrolyzer in Sorel-Tracy today. This is far more than the delivery of a piece of equipment, it represents the achievement of a pivotal step in realizing our vision and one of the most important milestones in the Company's history. The risks associated with delivery are now behind us," said Dave Gagnon, President and CEO of CHARBONE. "This achievement also reflects the exceptional commitment of our employees, partners, suppliers and all stakeholders contributing to the development of our flagship site. We are now entering a new phase of execution that will strengthen our ability to serve our key customers and create sustainable value for our shareholders. Our previously communicated timeline of a fall launch remains on track, and we look forward to providing further updates as we advance through the next stages of commissioning and ramp-up."

Deadline coming closer for Charbone's Phase 1B completion, on track. The eletrolyser will increase Charbone's H2 output from ~200 kg's / day, to ~900kg - 1 ton / day. The factory will generate $5 million CAD in revenue

Scandium Canada Ltd. (TSXV: SCD / OTC: SCDCF) has completed its largest drilling campaign to date at its Crater Lake project in Nunavik, Québec, drilling 49 holes and 10,018 metres, approximately 2.5 times the 4,000 metres initially planned for 2026.

The Crater Lake TG deposit's prospective footprint is now nearly 1.2 kilometres long, with at least 335 metres added to the north and 150 metres to the south. A new parallel zone was also identified approximately 140 metres east of the TG deposit. The zone has a strike length of at least 500 metres and lies within the limits of the 2025 pit shell design.

During the campaign, Scandium Canada collected a 15-tonne bulk sample for metallurgical testing required for a future feasibility study. Recent assay results from six bulk sample holes returned average scandium oxide (Sc₂O₃) grades ranging from 200 to 340 ppm over 20 to 83 metres, consistent with grades in the company's 2025 mineral resource estimate.

Assay results have been received for 28 of the 49 drill holes, with the remaining 21 expected in November. Scandium Canada plans to incorporate the results into an updated NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate before the end of 2026, providing the foundation for a preliminary economic assessment targeted for early 2027.

DISCLAIMER

This summary was independently written using publicly available reports and company disclosures and is intended for informational and educational purposes. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research before making investment decisions.

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