Namibia 3 weeks away from first green iron production

Hyiron Oshivela is set to produce its first green iron ore in three weeks after the company announced the successful production of green hydrogen last week.

This will be the continent’s first production of green iron, which is iron produced using sustainable, low-carbon methods.

HyIron chief executive and co-founder Johannes Michels says the company produced a few kilograms of green hydrogen last week, another milestone for the country.

“Since we are still busy optimising the system, we only produced small amounts of a few kilograms of hydrogen. But subsequently we are ramping up the volumes until we can produce around 215kg of green hydrogen per hour,” says Michels.

Green hydrogen is needed for the production of green iron, which is used in steel production.

“We plan to do the first production of iron in two to three weeks,” said Michels.

Last year HyIron’s signed an offtake agreement with German steelmaker Benteler, which will buy up to 200 000 tonnes (t) of direct reduced iron (DRI) from the company, more than 13 times HyIron’s production capacity (15 000t) in the first phase of the project’s development.

The initial phase required investments of 30 million euros (about N$595 million), over 40% of which took the form of grants from the German government.

The remaining sum was mustered by the company’s founders.

HyIron expects the second phase of development to begin in mid-2025, which will result in a tenfold increase of solar power capacity and will require an investment of 230 million euros (about N$4.56 billion).

The third phase is envisioned to start in 2026 and will once again increase capacity tenfold.

This will require another 2.3 billion euros (about N$45.6 billion).

By 2030, HyIron aims to produce two million tonnes of DRI per year.

HyIron’s DRI production process is entirely carbon-free due to its use of hydrogen as fuel. The water utilised in the process is recycled infinitely meaning no water source is being depleted.

HyIron is one of the green hydrogen projects operating in Namibia after the first official perspective on the implications of green hydrogen was officially released in the Harambee Prosperity Plan II (HPP II) in March 2021.

The company is currently in the process of launching a similar project in Australia and is also considering projects in Angola and Brazil, as well as up to four additional locations in Namibia.

The Green Hydrogen Strategy published in November 2022 states that “hydrogen could accelerate Namibia’s socio-economic development” and that “by 2030 the hydrogen industry could contribute up to US$6 billion (about N$119 billion) to gross domestic product (GDP), 30% more than 2030 GDP estimates with no hydrogen industry development. This would boost labour demand by generating up to 80 000 additional jobs by 2030 and up to 600 000 by 2040”.