In British Columbia today, there is a tussle going on involving US Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 400 or so ostriches, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). As you may or may not know, the Universal Ostrich Farm in Edgewood, BC has been ordered to cull the ostriches remaining since 67 of the birds were destroyed due to H5N1 (also known as Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza).
The CFIA wants the remaining birds euthanized, but U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., former TV host and current administrator for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Dr. Mehmet Oz, and U.S. billionaire John Catsimatidis want the birds sent to the US.
But this in-depth company report discusses a small cap company that is developing a new technology that might have saved the birds and even prevented the now deceased ones from getting H5N1 at all.
Cutting straight to the chase, Zentek Ltd. ZTEK 0.00%↑ (TSX.V:ZEN) is the first Canadian company to cross my radar in years with all of the requisite Midas Letter criteria of a successful business in a capital structure that is geared to serve its investors. (Disclosure: I’m not a shareholder and have no conflicts with Zentek.)
There are 3 distinct business lines within Zentek:
1. The Albany Graphite Deposit: An Ontario deposit of hydrothermal graphite of such high purity that it has been beneficiated and then directly purified to “five nines” purity, or 99.999% pure aka nuclear grade. The market value of such ultra-high purity graphite is US$25k - 30k per tonne.
2. ZenGUARD: A patented technology that dramatically increases the viral filtration efficiency of air filters without increasing energy costs or capital expense.
3. Triera Biosciences: A wholly owned subsidiary that holds an exclusive, worldwide royalty bearing license from McMaster University to use and practice all aptamer and DNAzyme developed by the Li Lab at McMaster University for the next 20 years.
ZenGUARD: The Cash Flow Engine
Sales of its flagship product ZenGUARD, - best described as a graphene-enhanced next-generation air filtration technology - to Dexterra Group $DXT.TO in Toronto, Ontario, worth an undisclosed value have begun. Developed for the Government of Canada, ZenGUARD Enhanced Air Filters are a brand new, safe, energy-efficient and cost-effective indoor air quality solution and additional sales are likely considering their unique ability to reduce viral load indoors without requiring additional energy or capital expenditures.
When a MERV 9 filter is coated with ZenGUARD, it brings the efficiency of the viral filtration beyond the MERV13 rating: the typical recommendation for reducing airborne pathogens.
Besides Dexterra and the Government of Canada, Zentek announced an agreement with UK-based RSK Environment Ltd. to act as its authorized facilitator for marketing and promoting its ZenGUARD filters in more than 20 countries.
The impact of the company’s graphene filter business will become apparent in Zentek’s financial statements this coming fiscal year.. Further down the road, ZenGUARD Enhanced Air Filters could very well disrupt the air filtration market.
Triera Biosciences: The Unicorn and Blue Sky Potential
But…and this is a huge but…the really exciting component of Zentek’s business is in its wholly-owned subsidiary, Triera Biosciences, focused on the development and commercialization of “aptamer” technology.
In a nutshell, aptamers are “synthetic single-stranded DNA- or RNA-type molecules that are built from the same building blocks of human DNA or RNA. They can selectively bind to a target with high affinity and specificity. – unlocking the ability to combat a wide range of diseases with an incredible level of precision and effectiveness.” That’s the definition on the company’s website.
Translation?
Aptamers bio-mechanically block viruses from accessing the receptors in our bodies that result in infection.
So no, not a vaccine. Think of this as a “pre-vaccine” or prophylactic that blocks the surface proteins on a virus to prevent them from binding to and infecting a cell.. Imagine: a nasal spray dose before heading into high-risk venues, like a packed event space or crowded commute in winter.
Triera received a $1.1 million grant in November last year from the Canadian government to “test its multivalent aptamer technology for the rapid drug discovery of therapeutics or prophylactics of highly pathogenic avian influenza (“HPAI”) A(H5N1),” according to a press release dated November 6, 2024.
On April 23, 2025, Zentek reported that it had delivered its lead candidate countermeasure and was moving onto the testing phase in partnership with McMaster University, who developed the underlying technology. The test will help develop a prophylactic and therapeutic for HPAI A(H5N1) following the multivalent aptamer strategy that successfully produced a SARS-CoV-2 aptamer
With H5N1 now spreading globally in commercial poultry populations, dairy cattle populations, and even humans, the urgency for such an effective countermeasure does not need much elaboration.
According to Dr. Kay Russo, a US based veterinarian, the United States has already lost 12 percent of its commercial egg-laying poultry population in 2025. Last year, twelve percent was the total loss for all of 2024 and this is only June, so the numbers are getting worse.
Never mind the human cases, of which there have been 70 since 2022 in North America.
So, the aptamer technology has already proven effective against all tested variants of SARS-CoV-2, but this time, it’s ahead of the infectious curve on H5N1 and may have wider application in the prevention and treatment of seasonal influenza
The Albany Graphite Deposit: The Asset Backing the Investment Thesis
As previously mentioned, the company owns the Albany Graphite Deposit in northern Ontario, a proven asset developed since 2011 into a Preliminary Economic Assessment published in 2015 indicating a potential gross revenue of US$4.8 billion over a 22-year mine life.
Then, they had purified the graphite to 99.9 (three nines) percent purity, which was sufficient for battery grade. But now, it’s at 99.999%, which is nuclear grade.
What’s the deposit worth today?
By any geological standard, it’s a multiple of Zentek’s market cap today of US$150 million.
The Zentek story is a textbook example of how a company begins life with one objective and management team, only to evolve through several different corporate concepts and associated management teams before finding its overnight success.
In Zentek’s case, the “overnight” successes were manifold, with the majority of them happening in the last five years. The company has essentially transformed from a mineral exploration project to a technology developer and incubator. It’s basically the story of a gift that keeps on giving.
But first, a little history.
I first covered Zentek Ltd in 2011 when it first went public. Their big story was the acquisition of an option from Cliffs Natural Resources to earn a 25% interest in the Albany claims north of Lake Superior in Ontario, Canada.
The thesis then, based on decades of exploratory data from various players since 1959, held there was good potential for the discovery of an economic deposit of nickel, copper, and/or platinum group elements (PGE).
The blessing and the curse was the claims covered 170k acres in some of the most mosquito-infested, swampy, bone-chilling winter territory of northern Ontario.
And so Zenyatta Ventures, as the company was known then, began life as just another mineral exploration company on the TSX Venture among hundreds plying the ground for valuable metals.
Then, in January 2012, it was announced that a graphite deposit had been poked into in 8 holes that all intersected graphite up to 4.6 percent, which was presented to the market as a “discovery”.
The market yawned, because in 2012, graphite wasn’t as well appreciated by the market as the important electric battery component that it is recognized for today. The stock hovered around $0.12. But then rumours started to swirl around the nature of the graphite at the Albany deposit, and the promotional machine kicked into high gear.
Throughout 2013, the company had increasing widths and higher grades of graphite, and through the analysis provided by Prof. Conly at Lakehead University, it was discovered that the graphite on the Albany project has a unique magmatic origin and was of an exceptional quality.
This captured the attention of the wider market, and the stock began became one of the highest volume traders of the year, ending 2012 just under $1 per share.
Then the hits just kept coming, and in a good way. The beneficiation and purification testing at SGS yielded 97.2% purity, but the goal was 99% or higher, which would put the graphite in the highest price category globally, upwards of US$10k a tonne. Zenyatta moved to acquire 100% ownership of the deposit from Cliffs, and the excitement really began.
By mid-2013, the stock was flirting with $5 a share, which in 2013 was an exception in an environment where mining stocks were rapidly falling out of favour with global investors. The company had achieved 99.97% purity on its graphite, and so the company had entered into the rarified air of companies with a proven valuable deposit.
They reported an initial resource estimate in the Indicated Mineral Resource category of 25.1 million tonnes with an average grade of 3.89%. But, since it was hydrothermal vein graphite, it could be purified to 99% and sold at premium prices.
And that was the first great gift to investors that peaked at $5 a share, and it spent the next few years drifting progressively lower, as the mining sector continued to labour under wide negativity, and rampant Quantitative Easing in the United States exponentially bankrolled the US tech sector, which was hoovering up all the investor interest globally. The stock closed out 2014 at $1.57 dipping as low as $1.07.
In June 2015, the company published a Preliminary Economic Assessment, and the stock rallied to $2.50 a share on the basis of a 24% Rate of Return on US$4.8 billion in revenue over a 22 year mine life.
Many lives had been changed since the company’s early days, but the best was still yet to come.
Whatever you do, don’t put it into production
There is a phenomenon in the mining industry where, once a deposit has reached a certain level of advancement, the shareholders begin to get nervous about the execution of the all the theories that have been developed, and management can get a bit entrenched in a position generously described as “wait and see”.
The don’t want to risk any undertaking that might be perceived as a negative by the market -especially in a bear market, which in 2016, mining definitely was.
By the end of 2016, the TSX Venture had lost half its value.
The idea of raising half a billion dollars for a graphite mine was seen as one of the worst ideas of that year, and to make matters worse, cannabis was becoming the new “it” thing, and the gnat-like attention span of investors had ditched the electric vehicle hype which was so 2014.
And thus began the end of the first chapter of Zenyatta Ventures.
Life transforming wealth for a few, wealth expansion and maintenance for many, and devastating losses for those with unfortunate timing.
Chapter 2: In pursuit of a business that is not mining.
A coup d’etat ensued after several years of further stagnation, resulting in a regime change led by a group of activist investors.
In 2018, founding CEO Aubrey Eveleigh lost an acrimonious (is there any other kind?) proxy vote in 2018 that resulted in his removal.
Francis Dubé, a dissident shareholder, became interim CEO, and spent some effort trying to attract a buyer to the project, and in 2019, oversaw a name change to Zen Graphene Solutions.
The company then embarked on a wide range of exploratory graphene-focused partnerships to find a way to put the Albany deposit into production for its own use, and Dubé and former strategy officer now CEO Greg Fenton guided the transition from a graphite project company to an intellectual property company.
Through this process, the company experimented with everything from graphene as a cement additive to quantum dots, which are invisible instances of graphene in quantum sizes with applications across bio-imaging, fluorescent polymers, anti-counterfeiting, alternative battery formulations, and as the novel COVID-19 pandemic began to spread, personal protective equipment in healthcare.
And so here we are today: A diversified company with (likely) significant cash flow, a valuable mineral asset, and a biotechnology moon shot that could put it in the blockbuster pharma category before the next pandemic.
Investment Thesis Summary
Zentek has 100 million shares outstanding, and as of the last financial statement, $1.48 million in cash plus proceeds from a $2 million debenture offering in April.
It reported $2.6 million in losses for the third quarter of fiscal 2024, or $0.02 per share.
Since then, the company sold the office building it operates out of in a lease-back strategy that generated a $2.5 million sale on the balance sheet.
Sales have commenced of its ZenGUARD Enhanced Air Filters, though we don’t yet have a clear picture on what that revenue looks like. Testing of its aptamer technology for the H5N1 application is underway on an expedited basis due to the global urgency of the outbreak. And the Albany deposit is a valuable risk-mitigator for investors now. It is my opinion that this company is poised for dramatic success that should translate into a positive experience for risk-tolerant investors in the near to medium term.
The expectation is that the company will become profitable within the next 24 months.
Disclosure: No Conflicts