Fortescue reveals “major” green metals breakthrough in Western Australia

Fortescue Future Industries has claimed a “major breakthrough” in green iron production, after reporting that “sizable volumes” of zero-carbon metallics were produced by the company in Western Australia this week.

FFI CEO Mark Hutchinson announced the breakthrough at the half-year results call for Fortsecue Metals Group on Wednesday, saying it had been achieved just this week.

“This week, we actually – our research and development team – had a major breakthrough on green iron and produced some in our Western [Australia] facility,” Hutchinson said.

Christian Heyning, FFI’s head of decarbonisation further explained that the company’s WA-based R&D team had produced “sizable volumes of green metallics” out of Fortescue’s own iron ore, without producing any CO2.

“Which is extremely encouraging to go from a few grams to a scale significantly larger than that,” Heyning told the call.

Fortescue has been working away on a number of fronts, in a number of parts of the world, to master the commercial-scale production of green metals, given the usual process of using iron ore to make steel traditionally involves the use of highly carbon-intensive blast furnaces.

In December of last year Fortescue signed an MoU with Austrian crude steel producer, voestalpine, along with Mitsubishi Corp and Primetals Technologies, to test methods of producing carbon-free steel by using renewable electricity to separate iron from its ore – in Austria.

FFI has likewise been investigating ways to make green steel in Asia in collaboration with Indonesia’s GRP, one of that country’s largest private steelmakers.

The technology – and any further details – behind this week’s green metals breakthrough remains a mystery, though, with the company’s billionaire founder Andrew Forrest joking that if he told anyone what it was, he would have to kill them.

“Let me just say that… to give a clue to all our competitors out there, it uses a membrane. And they’re gonna have to come and talk to us if they want to borrow the membrane,” Forrest said.