After striking a partnership with the US Department of Defence, Australian chemical maker Alexium hopes soldiers will never have to use its products.
The company has secured a contract, following two years of negotiations, to apply a fire retardant chemical on soldiers' uniforms.
"Naturally we don't want a soldier to really utilise our chemistry because ??? it means that they have been blown up or are on fire," says Alexium chief executive Nick Clark. 
"Nobody wants to see a soldier in duress."
The military partnership marks a rapid turnaround for the Perth-based company, which was trading about 6&cent; a share three years ago before Mr Clark moved to Washington DC. There, he lobbied policymakers on Capitol Hill, and sent Alexium's share price on a trajectory to soar past $1 this week, valuing the company at more than $260 million.
The US Department of Defence is funding field trials of the Alexium-treated uniforms which are expected to be completed in the first half of 2016.
Soldiers stationed in Afghanistan to Fort Belvoir in South Carolina will wear the treated uniforms as part of a field trial, which the Defence Department is funding.
Once the trial is completed, some time in the first half of 2016, the military will automatically procure the treated uniforms.
"There will be no more tendering, no more anything," Clark says.
"The only way that it can't be adopted is if the soldier says it's no good, because it's already been approved. If the soldier turns around and says 'it keeps on tearing', we will go back and decide whether or not it's our chemistry or the company that makes the uniform didn't make it well enough."

Fire retardant chemistry
The fire retardant chemistry, which Clark says is 100 per cent environmentally friendly as well as being "cost effective", works by "sucking out the oxygen" to stop a flame igniting or slow down a burn.
Clark says it had been "two years of pain" leading up to the Defence Department approving Alexium's product.
But he says it helped the company mature.
When Clark first arrived in the US the Alexium team was working in a laboratory in a warehouse no bigger than a domestic garage. Now he says its operations are more akin to a junior facility at US industrial giant Dow Chemical.
"It's the old Bill Gates in his garage, building the first computer, analogy. We were in a small warehouse facility in a lab no bigger the your home garage, banging away, trying to construct the chemistry, and we did it.
"Now people are standing up and taking notice."
People who have taken notice and travelled to Alexium's laboratory in South Carolina include Congressman Trey Gowdy, who is the chairman of Benghazi Committee and known for attacking former secretary of state and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton over the 2012 terrorist attacks in Libya, which killed four Americans, including US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
Others have included Congressman Joe Wilson, whose son is also the state attorney general for South Carolina, and Senator Lindsey Graham, who is one of the GOP presidential candidates.
"They look at it and investigate it, they get there staffers to look at it. When they put their name to something, they really invest the time to see if there is value there," Clark says.
"There was a lot of pain for two years. It was a tough slog."
Clark says "intimidation is understatement" when it comes to facing off policymakers and military leadership in Washington.
"I'm not taking anything away from Australian politicians but these are influential senators. These are people who determine outcomes in wars and global policy.
"And not only that, then I started hitting the Department of Defence. Here I am standing in front of seasoned colonels that have been in multiple combat tour situations, then I start hitting one and two star generals.
"The reality is ??? we provided with them with a solution that they couldn't legitimately say no to. It was environmentally friendly, it works and it's cost effective."
Alexium is not pinning all its hopes on military work. The company is already in the automotive space, providing fire retardant treatments to car carpets, seating fabrics and engine linings.
Clark says Alexium's "new generation chemistry" was foaming, which could be applied to building materials, including home insulation.
And he says the company also has its eyes on the skies.
"Here's the utopia, and this is not science fiction - imagine if you could FR-treat the carpets, the seating and internal fuselage of a plane, including all of the plastics of a plane, could you imagine how valuable that is to aviation safety? You can practically flame-retard 50 per cent of the plane because the rest is all metal.
"We are not far off this".
In the meantime, its new business have included securing a subcontract to provide fire retardant treatments to canvas tenting used at the United Nations' refugee camps. Orders are expected to begin for that project sometime in 2016.