The full-year profits took a hit from the on-going malaise in the Oil&Gas sector, although management sounded an optimistic note on the potential of its products, including graphene.
The advanced engineering materials group recorded losses before tax of £1.8m, up from £0.9m in 2015.
Revenues declined 10% from £4.98m to £4.4m, with improved sales at its thermal products arm failing to offset a drop in Hard Wear products unit.
Its tungsten carbide business took a hit from the downturn in the oil and gas sector, reporting sales for the year to end March of £3.1mln compared to £4.6mln in 2015, but it said all three of its divisions, hardware, thermal and graphene, had made progress.

Sales at the former, which manufactures microporous copper foam, improved from £0.4m to £1.3m, benefitting from the purchase of its heat sink business in February 2015.
In parallel, Hard Wear product sales were hit by the adverse environment in the oil and gas market, although new opportunities were emerging in defence and aerospace, the company said in a statement.
The unit makes sintered tungsten carbide business for "arduous environment" applications, primarily in Oil&Gas.
Since the end of the reporting period, the company had closed four partnerships to introduce its grapheme products into four key markets: batteries, carbon fibre products and enhanced composites for 3D printing and the aerospace industry.
It had also negotiated its first OEM contract for the use of low profile copper foam heat sinks in consumer devices.

Cash at period end was down from £3.5m one year ago to £1.6m, with £1.26m having been funneled into operating activities and another £276,000 towards the purchase of intangible assets.
Regarding the company's outlook, the board said it remained confident it was on track to benefit from progress made, saying that graphene was moving quickly towards commercial applications, while thermal products had moved into commercial production.
As of 15:56 BST shares in AIM-listed Versarien were 6.38% down to 11.0p.

Recently, entrepreneurs survey system of the Development Research Center of the State Council issued "China Enterprise Innovation Trends Index," it was said that the current Chinese enterprises began to enter the active phase of innovation, the main trend of China's economy will be innovation as motivation for the future development.

As early as the end of 2015, Chinese entrepreneurs organized the 23rd nationwide annual follow-up survey of enterprise operation, according to the survey, the average score of Chinese enterprise innovation trends index was 54.95. As it can be seen from the survey results, there were eighty percent of enterprises have realized the importance and urgency of innovation, they were willing to input more manpower and material resources for innovation. Innovation potential score was 64.68, innovation inputs was obtained a score of 67.83. Subsequent year the number of entrepreneurs planed to add the “total innovation investment” accounted for 55.1%, unchanged entrepreneurs accounted for 39.8%, and those entrepreneurs who reduce investment only accounted for 5.1%. This showed that companies already have a good potential for innovation and they all have high willingness to innovate.

The survey also found that the improvement of the quality of products, environment, new markets and other aspects of Chinese enterprises are showing a positive effect for innovation. Entrepreneurs continuously improve product and service quality, they pay attention to the impact on the environment healthy and safe. This will not only improve the degree of innovation of enterprises, but also improve the health of the entire market transactions. This makes it possible to maintain the vitality of tungsten enterprises to survive in the competition. Innovative products will greatly facilitate the application of tungsten heater and transactions, improving the downturn state of the tungsten market. Although many companies focus on innovation, but the execution is not enough, creative talents is still a big problem that many people have employment abroad, China still needs to make efforts.

It was reported that recently, the National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China issued management situation of nonferrous metals industry in the first half of 2016. It said that the smooth operation of it and the price of the main product had small rising, efficiency of the industry continued to be improve, the main business income was 2.2074 trillion RMB, an increase of 2.6% and profit was 68.74 billion RMB, an increase of 8.6%. Deficit of the industry reduced to some extent, amount of loss of enterprises was 17.6 billion RMB, down 11.8%, wherein the aluminum enterprises lost 4.05 billion RMB, down 22.4%. The industry fixed assets investment completed was 232.7 billion RMB, an increase of 2%.

It is clear from the above data that Chinese nonferrous metals industry continues to turn better, and the prices also get better. This is related to China's real estate rebound, increased investment and other reasons, it is also affected by industry output adjustment. But for long-term development perspective, because the long-term production of tungsten heater and other non-ferrous metal industry overcapacity, market supply and demand are imbalance and have other issues, so non-ferrous metals industry operators are facing difficulties.

Since 2014, China's major non-ferrous metal prices continued to fall dramatically, the industry is in loss status for a long time, there are a great majority of enterprises due to low prices and cannot afford to be out of the market. Coupled with the global economy in recent years are in a volatile situation, which made development of China's nonferrous metals industry become more difficult. With the recent release of relevant policies and measures to improve the continuous problem of production capacity, non-ferrous metal industry gradually improved, but if China wants the whole industry can achieve key breakthrough, she also needs to handle problem of the non-ferrous metal product application technology, product quality, engineering and construction standards and others.