Partanna Global is on a mission to change the way the world builds by creating concrete that’s carbon negative. In today’s episode of Bloomberg Intelligence’s ESG Currents podcast, Partanna Co-Founder and CEO Rick Fox joins Chris Ratti, BI’s senior ESG credit analyst, to discuss combating the climate crisis with a winning mindset, the company’s innovations, carbon credits and next steps for change.
ESG has become established as a key business theme as companies and investors seek to navigate the climate crisis, energy transition, and social mega trends, nodding regulatory tension, and pressures from other stakeholders. The rapidly evolving landscape has become innundated with acronyms, buzzwords, and lingo. We aim to break these down with industry experts. Welcome to ESG Currents, your guide to navigating the evolving ESG space, one topic at a time. Brought to you by Bloomberg Intelligence, part of Bloomberg's research department, with five hundred analysts and strategists working across all major world markets. Our coverage includes over two thousand equities, credits and outlooks on more than ninety industries and one hundred market indices, currencies and commodities. I'm Christopher Rady, senior ESG credit analyst to your hosts for today's episode. Today welcome with Rick Fox, co founder of Partanic Global. Welcome Rick, and thank you for joining us.
Thank you, Christopher.
I think it's safe to say that you're a pretty driven person, Rick, and have many accomplishments to your name. Being a first round NBA draft pick by one of the greatest basketball branches of all time, the Boston Celtics. You're also a three time NBA champion with the Leaguers, an accomplished actor and entrepreneur, with your most recent endeavor being Partanic Global. Would you like to touch on any of your past accomplishments and how they've guided you to where you are today.
Thank you, Chris for the opportunity to celebrate a lot of the mentors that have been in my life that set me up for the success I've had. That success has always come at the hands of teamwork and a lot of great teammates. So I would just take the moment and the opportunity to thank my parents. Obviously, to begin with, they gave me the foundation in life out of the Bahamas, and then I was grace to have a Hall of Fame high school coach and Out Rhodes, who taught me about talent, attitude, and respect along with repetition as the key founding principles of developing a basketball player. And then I got off to the North Carolina har Hill University with Dean Smith, who taught me how to be a student athlete on and off the floor. Also learned how to play with other great players because we had some of the best players in the country at the time, the likes of Michael Jordan coming before me, but other great players that went on to play in the NBA. So I developed my professionalism through Dean Smith. We learned how to play hard, play smart, and play together. That was the mantra there. And then I was drafted by Red Arbak, one of the top general managers in the history of basketball in the game. In the NBA, I was Larry Bird's rookie, Kevin McKay was rookie, and Robert Parrish's rookie. So I learned from the Big three there last year. And you're a Boston Celtic fan, Chris, so you know the history of the Celtics. I learned about the pursuit of excellence at the highest level in the NBA from the best players to play the game. And then about six years into my NBA career, I was called to Los Angeles by Jerry West, the logo on the NBA mantra there he is the logo under Jerry Buss, another great owner in the NBA, and I was coached by Phil Jackson and played with Shaq and Kobe. In all of those cases, each of those mentors not only gave me a blueprint to conducting myself on and off the floor, but they passed on to me the honor of being a captain on each of those teams. And so my success in leadership only is in life is only due to the fact that great men and great mentors have set me up for success. And then I haven't had to do that journey alone. I've always had the best of teammates that have lifted me up to higher heights, and I've been honored to be associated with all of them. So I'm grateful for a life and a foundation in sport. Taught me resilience, taught me stamina, taught me discipline, and taught me to pursuit of excellence. So I guess I appreciate the moment, Chris, just to think back on all of that, just to say, you know, I'm thankful and grateful that I can be an entrepreneur with that type of background.
Yeah, of course, I mean, I think it's kind of a great story of how you know, you keep building on accomplishments as well, you know, even after your career in the NBA, you went to acting, had a successful acting career, then turned to kind of entrepreneurship you were evolved in, you know, e gaming, and then now with this most recent endeavor, you know, Partana in terms of looking at trying to solve a solution to the climate crisis. So let's pivot to that.
Now.
You know, the building and construction sector accounts for thirty seven percent of global emissions. The production of concrete alone is responsible for around eight percent of global carbon emissions, and within that cement produces roughly point nine pounds of CO two for every pound of cement. With your most recent endeavor, you're trying to address that issue in terms of cement production. So let's talk about Partana and how it was born, I know in the wake of Hurricane Dory in twenty nineteen. So would you mind kind of taking us back to the start of the company and what made you focus on this particular issue of climate change.
For me, climate technology or becoming a climate tech entrepreneur was not at the forefront of my mind back in twenty nineteen. I was in the game industry, as you pointed out, making video games, and there were three pivotal moments that happened. In twenty nineteen one. I turned fifty years old in July, so I stopped and paused to look at the next fifty years of my life, to think about how can I be impactful and leave something behind, not only as an example for my kids, but for a legacy. Later on in that year, September first, there was a Hurricane Dorian that happened in the Bahamas. One hundred year storm they called it destroyed two of our islands and really displaced some thirty thousand people. And I at that point in time, I was used to donating funds to support hurricane relief because this wasn't the first hurricane we had. But when I got on the ground this time, I just saw something a little more devastating that I'd ever experienced before in my life. Hurricanes used to be a bit of an amusement park for me as a kid growing up in the seventies and the Bahamas. A lot of wind, a lot of excitement. But this was not a joyful moment to see and witnessed. And then I learned we were eleven billion dollars in debt as a country due to a lot of the rebuilding efforts and thinking of the future of our country, knowing that it wouldn't be the last time we see a hurricane. I started to ask a question of how can we build more resiliently, how can we build more sustainably? And I went on a journey for the remainder of that year in search of solutions that could benefit our country, basically from the place of survival survival. With my own family living in the Bahamas, the concern for them was strong. And then in January twenty six, I think it was Kobe Bryant passed away the helicopter accident, and that shook me to my core. It brought mortality into the equation. It locked me in on the realization of time and how much time we have and how fleeting it can be, and what are you doing with your time? How are you spending it? And so I reset my focus at that point. And then the world shut down a month later for COVID, And so when you think of you think of COVID and the impact that that had on the planet and us as humans at large. We got a snapshot of how fragile we are, and to me, that is a parallel track to climate change and the impact of climate We are living in a situation on this planet now where the planet is fragile and we're playing a huge role in that. So how we impact our planet is a responsibility that you either care to take up or you continue in your similar ways. And in my case, I thought it was appropriate to spend the second half of my life having more of an impact in a positive way, not only are my country's survival, but on the impact I would leave with my team here at Partonic Global on the way we build and continue to grow and develop in this world. Our mission being to delink development from pollution by bringing more nature, positive materials, advanced materials to advanced society.
Yeah, I mean that's truly inspirational. I mean, all the negatives that we're we're going on in the world and in your life, and you chose to take it and turn it into a positive by attacking something that you felt like, you know you could you can make a real impact on. So maybe we could just explain a little bit more about the product that Partanas has developed and and you know, talk us a little a little bit about the process and maybe talk about the integrity of it in terms of versus existing concrete blocks and and what Partana has done.
Yeah, So our company UH set out to disrupt the construction industry through nature positive building materials. UH. The fortune of of of the at the foundation of this company, the fortunate nature of our efforts are anchored in a binder that is patented and is bringing a plug and play solution to the production of concretes. For your audience that may not know how concrete is produced, Concrete is made with a binder called cement Portland cement. It is heated at crematorium levels to get to a binder that can be used in the production of concrete, which is used obviously for the last two hundred years to build the dwelling units and the buildings that we live and work in. Concrete has played a huge role in our history. But what we haven't done for the last two hundred years is really innovate concrete the same way we've innovated the cell phone or Wi Fi or the internet, or electric vehicles. In the fossil fuel car industry, innovation has been all around us. But for some reason, we've been burning rocks for two hundred years and we haven't figured out a solution to pivot from the heavy emissions that come from the production of Portland cement. So we talk about nine percent of all emissions are a result of the production of cement, a binder that is used to get to concrete that we use to build with. Well, if you think of China's emissions and the US's emissions, if cement was a country, it would be third on the list of total emissions produced in the world. So it's a huge problem, but it's not going away because we're not going to stop developing. Well. Partana's goal and the beauty of our product is we can pull one cement out of the equation in the production of concrete. You plug our binder in, which is a mix of upscaled big industry waste products that we recycle to get to our binder. We do zero clinkering, so we do not heat anything up to get to the production of our binder. We don't use the energy intensive means with which cement is used to produce, and we mix that into a into a formula that then activates the power of chemistry and we get to a concrete that avoids all the negativetivity of emissions that are produced and it ce meant and also through the magic of chemistry, has a chemical reaction that absorbs CO two in the process, so that not only do we avoid but we remove CO two in the production of our concrete. It dries and cures at direct room temperature. So we get to a more nature friendly produced concrete.
Yeah, that's great, and so are there any drawbacks in terms of, you know, your alternative concrete in terms of the building process that has that had to change at all? This is essentially interchangeable.
We are completely interchangeable anything that you can produce Portland cement to get too concrete products and then so there's a wide array of concrete products from CMU blocks to pavers to dials to pour in place ready mixed solution. We can actually do the same thing. The same properties exist in terms of strengths and the way we use the equipment that is used to make Portland cement concrete it's no different than ours. So we are not any any additional equipment needed. We actually just plug and play our binder as a substitute.
Well, that's that's pretty amazing. And as you look at this in terms of a growth perspective, you know, what are some of the challenges that you see for the product? And you mentioned the inputs are waste materials from desalination or the steel industry, So could growth to be limited by the availability of inputs?
No, Now, what I will share is that in every location, localization is an important mandate for most governments or developers. They like to use as much raw material as possible in their local environment. And in that case, some of our raw materials are more abundant in certain parts of the world than others. But there is no shortage of the raw materials that we use. We have a wide moat in our patents around the different materials we can activate to get to our process to deliver the finished product. But just like cement being a commodity, I can go to the Middle East where in some cases it's subsidized and it's extremely cheap, or I can go to small developing countries in Africa and discover the cement is extremely expensive. But until we can scale up to great volumes and measures where we can purchase our raw materials at at great scale to reduce the cost, we like to communicate to the market that we are a comparative and competitive binder to traditional Portland cement. The beauty of what we do is in n SG podcast here, like yours, you have to point to the ever growing pressures that companies and countries are under to be responsible for how they are impacting our planet, how they are leaving behind in the wake of their development and their and their manufacturing or their execution of consumer goods and products to the masses. How are they with trail of emissions are they leaving behind? And with Scope one, two and three. Uh, you know more and more the pressures of our advancing in our in our ecosystems, regardless of the country in the world, to be accountable for those emissions. And so what we have in our case is we provide a reduced embodied carbon product. Right, that's very critical and crucial for reducing Scope three emissions. We generate carbon credits through our production of our concrete, reason being we avoid negativity through the production of it, and we also remove through through the curing process we remove CO two generating carbon credits, so those are valuable, we mitigate and we remove and then and then when you look at how we leave behind the nature positive impact in narrative, an example if you're a developer or a country and you're interested in reducing your NDCs, or you're interested in really meeting sustainable mandates that you've set heading into twenty forty or twenty fifty in some cases further out, for some countries, you're going to start to mandate some of these these products like ours, and we're you're not going to hopefully won't be the only people out there delivering these type of products, but you'll start to mandate the use of these products, which will lead to I think a growing industry around nature positive building materials, and building with a more sustainable mindset. Right.
Yeah, now you brought up carbon credits. I had planned to talk about it a little after a few more kind of building block questions, but let's up right into it. I mean, the carbon credits that you're generating, I mean, I assume you are then using it as a as a separate area of you know, financing or generating income for the firm. I mean, are are you selling these carbon credits out?
So our carbon credit strategy really is dictated by by the customer, also dictated by the country as you As you know, the carbon credit industry is ever evolving it's a key tool in global strategy to reduce greenhouse gases and emissions in general. Right, It's it's the compliance market and the voluntary market. So it's it's divided up into two different markets. And in the case of how we approach the compliance market, some countries are further along, and some governments are further along and other entities, right, and so you look at the UK and their their cap and trade emissions, they have been a little bit ahead of the curve. You have other countries that are establishing what their compliance mandates will be, and so we look forward to that taking a more stable position globally. You know, the one price for carbon globally between the global north and south is something that's still yet to be established. But the voluntary market, on the other hand, voluntary carbon market allows you know, companies and organizations and individuals to purchase carbon credits voluntarily. Right. These credits, as we know, can offset emissions that and that are not covered by the compliance markets, and they can contribute to people's corporate responsibility goals that they either set for themselves are being mandated, right, Their ESG goals are now being met through the offset of some of these carbon credits. Now, the future of carbon credits I think are still to be shaped. Articles six point one, I think it's our six point two and six point four are key points of still evolving negotiations around how carbon credits will be will take shape and be compliance regulated globally. So I am interested, and we're playing a role in trying to not only educate our customers and governments that we engage with, but play a role in providing a option. You know, we are particularly focused on being a solution when things settle and become more and more balanced and more and more regulated. But I will point to one strong position that we do hold as a company, and that is that we are scientifically proven. So the reason you see the carbon markets consistently be volatile is the search and quest for, you know, the proof and stability of what people say to be a credit, is it actually there as a credit. So the nature the nature markets have taken a hit as of late scrutinize for the validity of nature based credits. Our scientifically proving credits for especially in the area of removal, have gotten a lot of attention because we can scientifically prove that a ton of our binder produces you know, two point six y two credits and so that in itself, when you start to look at the ability to prove that out and point to the accuracy of that, that becomes a real stabilizing and comforting marked or benchmark to hold onto you as the future of embedded.
Carbon And what about the kind of evolution of that, Like, have you seen that you're able to produce more carbon credits as you've refined the process and have been able to kind of get more credit for the work that you're doing, or has that changed it all since the start.
It has gotten more and more acceptable to embrace the idea that swapping out a Portland cement based binder in the production of concrete and the use of a Partana binder to get to a finished concrete production or a home or a building, or a road or a wall, any product that you're looking to build, if you can avoid and remove the CO two emissions associated with that production choice and use and use at the end of the day, a ESG reported result or a collaborative commercial deal where because of the purchase of a Partana product, you can actually negotiate with us the offset the retirement of that product, that credit generated retirement of that against your own emissions, so you'll start We're starting to find that more and more developers in more and more countries are looking at us as a real staple of a existence in the market for those that actually are looking for a choice. I always compare it to the automobile industry. Twelve years ago, I wasn't driving an electric vehicle. I now have one, but there were people in Los Angeles twelve years ahead of me that were first movers, first adopters, that purchased an electric vehicle, and because of their purchase, the market grew the acceptance of such a vehicle grew. And today you'll look around and I think every automobile manufacturer has a version in their line of an electric vehicle, just from the customer base that cares to drive an electric vehicle over a fossil fuel vehicle. And there's even hybrids. So if you look at our binder and our material, if you were building a home with Partana, which we've done, We've built a home devoid of any Portland cement. The foundation, the slabs, the blocks, the mortar, everything built with our material, and that generated one hundred and eighty two carbon credits and avoided some seventy two negative carbon credits had it been built with Portland cement. So, now if you look at the hybrid model, if we compare it to an automobile industry half half fossil fuel and half electric. If you don't want to build a home one hundred percent with partana, are you capable of having Partana live twenty to thirty percent of its material live in the production of your home. Short thing. So now you can build a hybrid home, you have some Partana in it and contribute to your sustainable goals, and then eventually, you know, we'll move to a place where the world can actually live with just a nature based, positive solution of building materials that do better for our planet.
Yeah, I think the you know, the increased availability of substitutes and a lot of different products is definitely evolving. The Partona bindery is a clear example of a you know, substitute that solves a major problem. And and I believe that you know, with these substitutes comes some financial backing or need for financial backing. So we've definitely seen an increase in what we'd call climate transition financing. So you know, as a company involved into transition, would you say that you've had adequate access to financing? Has there been you know, people definitely willing to step up and support this substitute product.
So talk is very prevalent in UH in sustainability and advancing innovation value. Innovation is is always a difficult UH journey for investors UH to get to understanding the impact of innovation on our on our world is not a not a huge leap to get to. People will see innovation and immediately want to embrace that, and then you start you start to have the conversation of the brass tacks of what it costs to actually bring that innovation to the world. And in a lot of cases, what we've seen is that a lot of that the dollars have flown have flowed to more you know, sas based prop tech focused solutions around sustainability in the built environment that isn't necessarily so cap x intensive. Now is what is going to have the greatest impact for us going forward will be the innovations that are supported, either it be through grants or government backing, or what we'll start to see is funds. And there are funds out there that are starting to advance the cap X intensive needs of innovation in the area of sustainability. So I don't I will definitely celebrate some of those that I've experienced and engaged with, but they're not as full, They're not as full in the market today as you would point to in the area of more SaaS based solutions. But for us, we're we're CAPEX intensive solution i e. Meaning for us, building our facilities to be able to deliver this product at great scale to the world requires the type of support financially that is in the in the magnitude and order of you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. And so whereas we've had initial support from angel investors and seed investors who have taken us to this point that they've been beyond supportive and they have to give them a shout out. Truebi Adventures has been amazing along with a number of our other LPs who believe that this binder needs to come to the world. They've they've doubled down and tripled down on different occasions to continue this journey. And then we've now started to move into the conversations with sovereign wealth funds and huge VC funds that are more comfortable having conversations about CAPEX the scale of the hundreds of millions of dollars. So I'm noticing climate financing getting a lot of attention. I will spend some time at the White House next week in this very conversation about how do you how do you support technology and innovation like ours to reach its scaled magnitude to really actually not only become an idea and a bit more of a solution. And so I hope to leave an imprint on the minds of those that are serious about financing companies like ours. But it's out there. The conversation is continuing to increase, with most of the funding is coming at this point from grants and government backed. I would have to celebrate the Prime Minister of the Bahamas for his innovation and leadership. He supported our company by granting us ten acres on the port in the Bahamas to set up and we did then a PPP, a private public partnership with the Governor of the Bahamas to build affordable housing some thousand homes, which is an example of the support needed from partnerships to move this type of advancement forward. So where we go from here. I hope to report back to you in the next six months that climate financing is something that's now becoming more readily available for companies like ours. Yeah.
No, that's actually a great point. I mean you talked a little bit about where you started too, in terms of the first project with the Bahamas. But I also know that you know you mentioned the Saudi Wealth Fund. I know you're working with Saudi Arabia. Can you can you speak a little to what's on the horizon. I think you mentioned that you know the government backed project, but do you think there's a different customer base as well.
Yes. Right now, the focus for us has been to bring our product as widely to the world as possible. We go where we're most I think engaged, are most invited. My parents always told me go where you wanted, right, Go where people will actually entertain, entertain you know what you have to offer, versus chasing the people for people and places for validation.
Yeah, very sound advice. Go where you're wanted. I like that a lot.
No, it's true, go where you wanted, and because you know, you can spend a lot of your energy trying to get acceptance and please people who really aren't prepared for you are really aren't prepared at this stage in their lives to make the right decision. So we went to a country on the front line in the Bahamas as an example where innovation has to come, like we don't have time. We're slowly going underwater right So supporting of a government that knows they need a solution is how we were able to move into the building codes and to build homes with our material. We then ended up in the Middle East in Saudi Arabia because of the brine. They are a huge desalinating nation. Some seventy percent of all desalination in the world comes from comes out of the Middle East, and they produce an exorbitant amount of brine. Brine being a waste product from the salination that's pumped into the ocean that destroys our sea beds and is a horrible waste product, but it's a seed stock for us. It's a positive in our binder. So we became a solution for that region. And not only are we in that region because of the brine, but they are the largest developers in the world right now building their country to a new level and for the next fifteen years. So when you talk about solving a problem of development and delinking development from pollution, you go where the problem is. You go to the front line, You go to the most developing country in the world right now, and you fight for your product to be in these developments so that you can reduce the impact of all the emissions that are happening in that part of the world. And so what we've discovered is that there are countries and governments and developers who have made mandates, have been posed mandates for change, and their goals aren't twenty fifty. Their goals are twenty thirty. So in the case of the vision in that country, in Saudi Arabia, they have a vision to have a carbon negative expo in twenty thirty the first ever. Well, how do you get to a carbon negative expo? You need carbon negative building materials. So you know, you go where your company goes where people are calling for your product. And so we've now expanded into other countries where in the United States we are looking to be in Africa, and we go where people are seriously looking to embrace and make change and not talk about change coming in twenty sixty or twenty seventy they're talking about change coming today.
Right, Yeah, I think I think that's exactly a key to my next question in terms of what I wanted to ask you in terms of, like, you know, people are very are setting a lot of goals towards you know, becoming net zero or even negative. So you know, what's your level of optimism in terms of us meeting a lot of these goals globally? And do you think solutions like the one Partana has developed, you know, will be enough.
So if my if my team were on here, they would they would repeat what I say, probably daily to everyone. I think the world looks exactly as you imagine it, and there's not enough of us out there imagining this. This twenty point comeback from the state we put ourselves in as a planet, right with our emissions and the impact on our environment that we continually continue to you know, produce. I have been in many situations in my professional sporting career we're being down by twenty with five or eight minutes to go and have an appeared insurmountable you know way, you know, way forward and a loss being on the way. But I've won. I've won a lot of games though, coming back from twenty and so, I think what we have to do is we have to hold on to the hope and the faith that solutions are on the way and that there are enough leaders and leadership choices out there that can be made for us to start to turn the tides on the results being a win in the coming years. What does that look like. I think it looks like exactly how we imagine it to look. And I imagine it to look like us celebrating a turnaround from the way we build in the world, the choices of materials we use in the world. I look at the future of not just me as an individual driving and our team driving these solutions, but others picking up the mantle and joining the crusade to actually make their own individual choices in their personal life or at work, in their choices around their developments, or in their government ministries, where they start to mandate that these products and these choices are not just options, but are forced choices that need to be implemented. So I believe in that. I believe that it's possible to see this turnaround begin to happen if we focus on and celebrate the moments and the people and the places and the developments that are doing it. It becomes more acceptable and more more of a reality when people believe that they can touch, feel, and see these things in the world, and hope then has more than a fleeting chance. It's actually you know, it starts to grow and and so I am really hopeful and I remain focused on not only being a company that is a part of the solution, but maybe exciting other entrepreneurs to go on their journey, their own journey to contribute to the impact of bringing other solutions to the forefront.
Agree wholeheartedly. I mean, we can't give up just because we're down by twenty, right, we have to keep playing the game.
We got to fight till the end.
We gotta we gotta keep battling.
Yeah. And in the case of our company, Chris, in the case of our company, we started off in the construction industry, right, But there are many other industries that can have this you know, same impact and change the way the outcome of this from energy as we know, the energy transition, transportation, the ocean, coreal you know around core refrustration. Uh, there's so many other industries. We just happen to be tackling this one first, or I encourage whatever industry interest you to to to move on and to head in that in that path and direction of being an impact through your own interest in entrepreneurship.
Yeah, I think those are excellent words of advice to h to end this podcast. So you know, with that, Rick, I'd really like to thank you for this great discussion. I think it was very insightful, very powerful, and you know, motivational at the same time. So thank you again, and thank you to our listeners for listening in. You can find more information on climate and investments, carbon markets, and a whole array of other topics by going to b I E. S G on the Bloomberg terminal, which opens up to the Bloomberg Intelligence ESG research dashboard. If you have any other ESG questions or quandaries you could and you'd like to talk to a BI expert, please send us an email at ESG Currents at Bloomberg dot net.