A Gloucestershire firm at the forefront of the graphene revolution has revealed a deal it says has "considerable" potential, with one of America's biggest companies.

Versarien has been busily championing the potential of the carbon-based super-strong and super-durable material and landing significant interest as it goes.

The Cheltenham-headquartered firm has now revealed it has signed an agreement with Los Angeles-based firm AECOM to explore the potential of its graphene-based Nanene in construction.

AECOM has an estimated 87,000 staff and was ranked 161st on the 2017 Fortune 500 list.

The Californian giant is involved in everything from planning new cities and building "iconic skyscrapers" to "repairing damaged environments."

In the UK its building projects have included the Serpentine Pavilion, part of the Serpentine Galleries in Kensington, London, and back across the Atlantic, the National Football League's Atlanta Falcons and Major League Soccer's Atlanta United, and the Golden 1 Center, Home of the NBA Sacramento Kings.

AECOM "will initially be working on a project involving the incorporation of Versarien's proprietary Nanene few layer graphene nano-platelets into large-scale polymer structures used in civil infrastructure projects, with a view to increasing their structural strength".

Neill Ricketts, chief executive officer of Versarien, said: "We are very pleased to have entered into this latest graphene application collaboration agreement, the first where our graphene will be incorporated into a large-scale structure for use in construction.

"Should this collaboration progress as we hope the potential for Versarien is considerable, as the volumes of graphene that will be required are significantly larger than for many other applications given the scale of the structures being produced.

"Our existing collaborations continue to progress and I look forward to providing further updates in due course, together with announcing others that are currently in discussion."

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