Hydrogen hopeful Infinite Green calls in administrators over debt dispute

Hydrogen hopeful Infinite Green Energy (IGE) says it has called in administrators, a move reportedly kicked off by a fight with shareholders. 

The developer was pitching a demonstration hydrogen plant for Northam, west of Perth, that could produce 4.4 tonnes of hydrogen a day from two five megawatt (MW) electrolysers.  

It was supposed to begin production in 2024, then in 2025, and that timeline finally slipped to mid-2026. But Western Australia planners knocked the development application back last year for not being green enough.

On Monday, the company brought in administrators, a day before it was due to appear in court to settle a dispute over debt, according to a report in Nine newspapers.

The dispute had been played out over the last six weeks because one of the company’s investors, Queensland-based DD Investment, was trying to have liquidators appointed to claw back an unpaid $3.85 million debt from a 2023 deal.

CEO Stephen Gauld had claimed he could access $5 million from a WA investment attraction fund.

Court documents shot DD investment paid some $3 million for 1.685 million shares in IGE, valued at $2.25 if an initial public offer didn’t happen by 30 June last year.

IGE then promise to redeem the shares but failed to pay, leading to the Queensland investor to start legal again, DD Investment said.

IGE was approached for comment, but did not respond.

Flurry of activity in 2023

In 2023 the company secured a range of high profile investors, partners, and financial support, but was also already looking financially shaky.

IGE, which was once called Infinite Blue Energy, pitched the idea as a $120 million solar and green hydrogen project, with a truck loading terminal and an expansion of the neighbouring Northam solar farm, bought during the flurry of activity in 2023 for $8 million, from 11 MW to 24 MW.

The joint venture also included Samsung C&T which signed on in February 2023, and Doral Energy Group.

It secured $5 million from the Western Australia government in July 2023, but by this year had only met enough milestones to release $1.5 million of that.

But also in 2023, auditors at Grant Thornton cautioned a series of high profile investors that it didn’t think IGE could continue as a going concern.

And in October that year, the Regional Development Assessment Panel couldn’t agree on approving the project due to concerns around the amount of hydrogen set to be stored on site. 

By March last year it appeared that the project was dead in the water when WA planning officials rejected it entirely.

They said the use of 50 per cent grid energy for the project meant it couldn’t be considered green, given more than half of the SWIS is powered by gas and coal power, according to Open NEM data. 

And they questioned basic issues such as how the site would monitor hydrogen stores to keep it under a 5 tonne limit, and how it would do this if it wanted to ramp capacity in future. 

The chair, former Woodside Energy chief executive Peter Coleman, left last year.

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