Yes an engineer but lets call it a TECH Engineer. Compressed air technology is its main business, develops industrial air compressors and Gas seals and whats more it provides them for the OIL and GAS industry.
Very close to commercialisation now with its compressors and seals and todays deal ( see below ) should bring that very close.

Charges upfront payments, continuing royalties and development contracts so revenues are not lumpy.

It as a market cap circa off the top of my head 20 million(hope my calculator is now working) and as circa of 5 million cash on the books, very nice.

Some very big names as customers.

Heres todays announcement...........

Corac Group Plc
26 May 2004


For Immediate Release 26 May 2004


Corac Group plc ('Corac')

Joint Industry Programme for Downhole Gas Compression

Corac, the intellectual property and licensing company specialising in
compressor technology, is pleased to announce the signature today of a Joint
Industry Programme ('JIP') for the development of its unique, patented downhole
gas compression technology.

Following the recent successful completion of a Shell funded feasibility study
which evaluated both the technical and economic viability of the technology,
considerable industry interest has been generated, culminating in the addition
of a further four major international oil and gas operators to the project.

The participants of the JIP comprise ConocoPhillips, ENI, Husky Energy,
Repsol-YPF as well as Shell, all of whom have gas assets worldwide which they
believe could benefit from this game changing technology. As well as covering
the development costs for the next phase, the participants will also make
substantial resource available to ensure the final product specification meets
the requirements of the industry.

Corac's downhole gas compression concept involves the coupling together of a
number of axial compressor modules in a single compression train for
installation in the well bore in close proximity to a gas reservoir. In this
location, a modest uplift in pressure results in a very significant increase in
gas production compared with conventional methods using surface compression,
thereby accelerating gas production and cash flow from a producing asset.
Potential production rate enhancement of up to 40% has been demonstrated through
the application of downhole gas compression during a number of gas field case
studies carried out over recent months.

Placing the compressor downhole could also have the effect of being able to
lower the reservoir abandonment pressure which in turn would materially increase
the ultimate recovery from a gas field, thereby further enhancing the economic
benefit from the installation of this novel application of existing technology.

Phase 1 of the JIP is scheduled for completion by the end of 2004, with further
engineering and development work leading to the manufacture and testing of a
prototype downhole in a producing gas well within the following two years.

Commenting on the JIP, Professor Gerry Musgrave, Chairman, said:

'The support from such eminent oil and gas companies vindicates Corac's
development to date of the downhole gas compression project and gives the Group
another product line to bring to the market using its core technologies. It is
the start of a major business development opportunity which is expected to have
significant international ramifications throughout the upstream natural gas
industry.'ENDS.

Although loss making at the moment it shouldnt be very long before this one turns the corner.

Outlook

The Company has a loyal, talented workforce dedicated to the innovation and
exploitation of the technology. Successful trials have demonstrated the
commercial performance in Corac's industrial air compressor and its seals. The
Board is striving to deliver the right manufacturing and sales licences which
will yield the best returns in the long term.

We are confident that a number of deals, which have been subject to recent
intensive negotiation, will be successfully concluded in the near term.

Short to medium term investment, and anyone interested should DYOR and please remember you are responsible for the timing of your buying and selling actions.

cheers GF.

They better not hit too many problems with these DGC's else i'm done for...lol
still they say life, indeed, is a gamble...

well, this is where having three major oil/gas companies on board helps
plus it is not like they invented the thing last week, have tested a minature version on the lab yesterday and are now going downhole all fingers crossed!

We are talking about an exhaustive and quite rightly, long development process in which all the JIP partners have had input.
The loop testing has been running , for what, 18 months or so now. These guys do know their stuff.
That is not to say it is all 100% guaranteed, but if the gas boys are prepared to go downhole in live producing wells, then their confidence must be high and that will do for me.

My sentiments exactly, things i cant get my head around is, if these things create as much thrust as a jet engine, how the hell are they going to secure them 2 miles down a well???

not sure I worry too much about the nuts and bolts in as much as if the JIP boys are ok with it, then I reckon there is nothing I can think of that they won't have thought of a long time ago and come up with the appropriate solution!

I understand the JIP guys have full time teams of engineers working on DGC deployment and how they do various things.

Given the massive rewards on offer here for the gas companies, I'm not too surprised by the amount of effort they are putting in.

Another bonus for the gas boys is that when the tech is 100% proven in situ, they will be able to re-assess their gas assets in an upwards direction. Given how important that reserves are to the industry, this is also a big driving force.

I wish i could find another five companies with as much potential upside, cos i am overweight here and would love to spread the risk, but i dont really see the machines failing, they have already been proven to work, the only question should be what percentage success rate in uplift of gas will they have, 30% - 40% increase predicted is a lot, but hey even 20% would be a massive success...

BT
I think you have put your finger well and truly on it, it is also my view it will be a question of how well they work. But even a modest uplift in gas will still be a massive financial success for the gas companies. One thing here is that the software modelling used in the oil and gas industry is just about as good as you can get and has been proven to show good correlations between predicted and actual performance. Add that in with the practical results from the loop testing and it helps to give a good degree of confidence that the expected lift will be achieved.

There are plenty of other companies out there with plenty of upside potential.
But the problem is that often they are resource plays banking on hitting whatever they are searching for, or plays where the timescales are such that commercial deployment is years away or the market cap has already factored in a fair chunk of upside.

In terms of risk/reward, market cap, times to market, market potential etc etc there are not too many like CRA.
I like the look of some of the fuel cell plays, where market caps have come off by around 40% on average over the last year, but it still looks to be a two to three year wait at best till they start commercialising the things, so , perhaps, plenty of time still with those.

Interesting to see MACD indicator, heading back towards positive, which could lead to the next leg up shortly... I wonder what news might trigger it off? maybe nothing to do with DGC, would be nice to see news of orders from Asseal, as people forget the company is progressing well in its other products...

BT check out kenz a well established co. but a new float--results on Mon and I hope they at least rise to the sp of lam or even better mirror wsm. I've not sold my cra to buy them though as I'm sure those with patience will be well rewarded by cra---it might take a while though! lovely day here in Devon so I'm off to enjoy it!

nice looking chart, BT
news could be from a variety of areas but I think the thing that will drive the stock along is the underlying story here is strong and after five years of DGC development, we are on the home straight.

Industrial Air could also surprise to the upside, another big market, CRA now have machines at end users and further orders could be in the pipeline.

In spite of all the above ramping today sp remains stuck and volume so far under 150k?

seemed like a good exchange of views and info to me, but in any case, who would expect a moneyam BB to increase volume and/or the sp?
I certainly don't!

ps, sp not stuck, up a whole penny now!!!!!

Perhaps somebody has actually put their money where their mouth is at last!!

LOL!

I think BT and to a lesser extent, myself, have already done that today!
but more are always welcome! Can we tempt you,halifax?!!!

Was tempted a long time ago, am still waiting for payola time!!

fair enough!
must have been a long time ago to not be in profit yet
think CRA were last at these sort of levels coming off the dot.com period , which was back in the dark ages, something like 2001

Aha, account with IG up and running, TDW still not playing ball here, so have just bought another 15000 through IG, also free Level2 access through their account...

Ted .... hope you have a good experience with IG ..... i know a lot of the guys on the cfd side and they are a really nice and helpful bunch ...... i am quite tempted to get back into CRA as i think their product has great potential .... however, the markets at the moment are very scary and another side of me tells me to go at least 75% liquid

I recently sold up everything except couple of gold miners and of course CRA, thing is Rich, look at the chart and tell me if you think they are affected by the markets??? this is one share that has certainly bucked the trend, obviously a big sell off could always be around the corner, however it always hits lots of buying pressure whenever the mm's drop the price, this share has taken a long time to be in the public domain, but i believe it is well watched now, and has a lot of people waiting in the wings to buy on the dips.

I have an IG account, didn't know you could get free L2 access throught it, how do you do that, BT?

Back to CRA, I think it is ,unfortunately, quite probable that one of the oil services companies will take out CRA at any point in the next few years. That is my only real concern, as the technology and business opportunity here means that CRA should be a multi-bagger under its own steam. But an oportunistic bidder may get CRA considerably cheaper than that.

Still, guess a couple of quid would not be the end of the world!