MARINE SCIENTIST AND ENGINEERS

DSM has been able to acquire the leading marine scientists and engineers in the world. Steven Scott is a true pioneer of black-smoker research and will lead our exploration effort. Our scientist are 'wired into' the international marine research community and will be able to keep us posted on new discoveries well in advance of publication and in many cases, they are the discovers. If the research community makes a significant new discovery, DSM will be able to capitalize on it and lease the site for future investigation before any competitor will be aware of it. DSM marine geologist have worked on or discovered the sites that are in Steve Scott 's review of seafloor mining in the Business Plan and in some instances they have made multiple cruises to these sites. As DSM becomes successful, other major mining companies will want to enter into this field. That will be very difficult from a human resource posture, because DSM has already tied up virtually all of the experienced researchers.

MARINE BIORESOURCES DIVISION

The sea has been compared to the Amazon rain forest in the diversity of life that it contains and as much as 90% of all life on earth lives in the sea. Most new drugs are derivatives of living things. The drug and chemical companies are scouring the planet's diminishing rain forest, "Bioprospecting" for new species of plants or bacteria etc. from which to develop new products. Hydrothermal vents (black smokers) host exotic life forms that live in extreme environments and are very valuable commercially (see the emailed Diversa announcement). The diversity of these organisms will vary within a site and from site to site. The key words are diversity and extreme. From a business perspective the greater the diversity the greater the opportunity to find a new active substance. Extremophiles are organisms that are in high demand because of their unique properties that allow them to survive extreme temperatures, hot or cold, toxic environments, etc. Charles Morgan and Oskar Zaborski will lead DSM into this exciting opportunity.

DSM has adopted a business model called the Gatekeeper. Under this model DSM will collect the biologic material (bacteria (bugs)) prescreen the bugs into broad categories and deliver them to our strategic partners for final processing into new drugs, enzymes etc. DSM will be paid for the collection of the samples and receive half of the licensing rights on any new agent that is brought to market. Oskar Zaborski will write a detailed business plan and set up all of the strategic partnerships and alliances. He has just moved into the Baltimore, Maryland area (the biotechnology center of the world) and will setup our bioresources head office. Charles Morgan will set up our biotechnology collection center in Honolulu, Hawaii.

DSM will be required to conduct a biologic base line survey for an environmental assessment for each site that we work on around the world for our mining activity. This is a highly unusual and unique opportunity to make a bio-base line study pay for itself. The synergy of these two businesses is very high. See the marine biotechnology section in the business plan and appendix. The value proposition is listed in the following:

• This will be the first systematic collection of extremophiles from different environments conducted on a worldwide basis.
• Each site will have different extremophiles.
• DSM can bring the samples up at pressure (thus alive). The CSSF has built a device that works with ROPOS. This will allow the samples to be cultured for the Pharmaceutical industry. DSM will be the only company that can do this at this time.
• DSM will be able to leverage the cost of bioprospecting because of our mining activity and derive an economy of scale.
• This economy of scale allows DSM to have a decisive advantage over any company conducting marine bioprospecting alone.