Fortescue Metals forms ‘accelerator’ green hydrogen funding platform

The company described the formation of Fortescue Capital, headquartered in New York City, as “an integral next step in Fortescue’s commitment to deliver green energy projects and decarbonisation investments”.  

Mark Hutchinson, chief executive of Fortescue Energy, said: “Fortescue is taking its global pipeline of green hydrogen and green ammonia projects to final investment decision, and in doing so has communicated our intention and desire to bring additional equity investors on board.” 

Fortescue Capital is being developed as a fiduciary for third-party capital, which will complement the existing energy and metals internal corporate finance teams and work collaboratively to serve Fortescue’s shareholders. Funding models will differ between projects but the company expects to hold an equity stake of 25–50% per cent in each.

The announcement comes as Fortescue’s founder and chairman, Andrew Forrest, announced investments of $5 billion in a project to produce green hydrogen in the Pecém industrial and port complex, in Brazil’s Ceará state.

Forrest reportedly made the announcement after a meeting with Brazilian president Lula da Silva and Ceará governor Elmano de Freitas. The project is said to have the potential to produce 837t of green hydrogen per day from 2.1GW of renewable energy. 

The mining company’s move into green energy has yet to deliver major returns for Fortescue.  In the year to June 2023, its energy division is reported to have achieved revenue of $107 million with a loss of $617 million, while the metals group’s earnings were $10.5 billion from $16.8bn of revenue.

Earlier this year, senior executives left the mining company – apparently over its green energy strategy.

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