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.
The military partnership marks a rapid turnaround for the Perth-based company, which was trading about 6Â¢ 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.
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."
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."
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.
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, new business includes securing a subcontract to provide fire retardant treatments for canvas tenting used at United Nations' refugee camps. Orders are expected some time in 2016.