Fortescue backs new green hydrogen technology start-up, this time in NZ

Fortescue Future Industries, the green energy investment arm of iron ore billionaire Andrew Forrest, has made a new investment in green hydrogen technologies, this time a New Zealand start up that makes small scale liquefaction systems.

Christchurch-based Fabrum raised $NZ23 million from a group of investors led by London venture capital firm AP Ventures, an entity that bankrolls green hydrogen innovators, and also FFI.

The Kiwi company is building a new factory to meet demand for its small-to-medium scale liquefaction systems and composite cryogenic vessels, used in the production, storage and dispensing of green hydrogen, liquid nitrogen, liquid natural gas and liquid air, aimed at transport, mining and aviation.

“It doesn’t get any better than this; our strategic investors are global pioneers in the hydrogen ecosystem, collectively spanning the areas we want to expand into, both geographically and in terms of market verticals,” says Fabrum CEO Ojas Mahapatra.

“This investment will help us accelerate our game-changing technologies to unlock value in the zero-emission transition value chain and offer a new future for sustainable transport, travel, industry and energy self-sufficiency.”

Mahapatra told RenewEconomy the company has been making sales since 2004 in markets adjacent to the newer market for hydrogen systems.

“We have delivered technology for hydrogen production systems for early customers, and our new factory will help meet the growing demand for our hydrogen systems and other technologies for aerospace, heavy transport and heavy industries,” he says.

Fabrum was founded in 2004 and merged with AFCryo, its supplier of cryogenic systems, in 2020. It recently signed a deal with UK-based green hydrogen technology CPH2 to manufacture its membrane-free electrolyser in Christchurch in order to make hydrogen production systems.

Late last year it released a green hydrogen fuelling system for aeroplanes in conjunction with British engineering consultancy Filton Systems Engineering and GKN Aerospace, which includes hydrogen conditioning, liquefaction and storage.

Although the aerospace industry is yet to produce a plane that can fly solely on hydrogen, the concept is a stretch goal for airlines and aircraft makers around the world. Aviation produces about 2.5 per cent of global emissions.

FFI CEO Mark Hutchinson says their interest in the company is its technology applications for hard-to-abate sectors like mining, heavy transport and aviation.

“Fabrum is a clever, innovative team doing fantastic work pioneering liquid hydrogen applications and the type of business that we want to see succeeding to help grow green hydrogen as the future fuel of choice,” he said.

“The innovative applications being developed by Fabrum will contribute to the growth of supply and demand for green hydrogen globally and help to deliver on Fortescue’s decarbonisation plan for its mining operations.”

FFI is currently building what was once hailed as the largest hydrogen electrolyser manufacturing plant in the world, with a proposed annual capacity of 2GW a year, in Gladstone in Queensland.

It was planning to use electrolyser technology from US-based Plug Power, but that agreement has been pulled and FFI is now looking at other technologies, including ones that it says it is developing itself.

FFI’s hydrogen technology investments include Sparc, which actually uses photocatalysis to produce hydrogen rather than electrolysis, but appears to be at an early stage.

In 2021, Fortescue also announced it had designed and built its own electrolyser capable of producing renewable hydrogen. It said then that the process had yielded a number of new innovations in electrolyser design, which would form part of the company’s “electrolyser patent family”.

Last month, Hutchinson said the company was developing both PEM and alkaline technologies. “The feeling really was that we are advanced with our own technology,” he told a media and analyst briefing.

“The IP is ours. We can do it at scale. I think Plug Power is very much locked in to a certain technology and to on a production cycle.”

Japan-based Obayashi Corporation and New Zealand-based K1W1 were also investors in Fabrum’s funding round.