Quinbrook to invest $3.5b for green iron project in Queensland
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The news: Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners today said it would develop a green iron project in partnership with Central Queensland Metals (CQM) in Gladstone, Queensland.
The numbers: CQM holds exploration permits for the Eulogie magnetite iron ore deposit, which is estimated to contain 465 million tonnes of extractable material.
Quinbrook said it would invest $3.5 billion in the exploration, development, mining and concentration of the resource, as well as its conversion to green iron in the Central Queensland Hydrogen Project (CQ-H2), which Quinbrook is also developing.
The context: Low-emissions or "green" iron, is seen as a prospective method to decarbonise the steelmaking process, with hydrogen used to convert the iron ore into briquettes that can be fed into blast oxygen or electric arc furnaces, rather than the traditionally used emissions-intensive metallurgical coal.
Currently, the cost of producing green iron is substantially higher than conventional iron, so some sort of subsidy would be required to bring the cost down. It is not clear whether the project would be eligible for support under any of the funding packages that comprise the $22.7 billion Future Made in Australia policy the federal government announced in last week's 2024-25 budget.
What they said: "This is exactly the type of project the 'Made in Australia’ and critical minerals policies of the federal and Queensland state governments are designed to support and the recent federal budget announcements have given us and our partners the confidence to get on with it," David Scaysbrook, Quinbrook managing director.
The source: Quinbrook media release
