Industrial technologies are the often overlooked, missing piece of the decarbonisation puzzle

But savvy investors know the investment case underpinning critical minerals is unchanged – decarbonisation is happening now, and a lot of new projects must come into production to reach net zero.

For RFC Executive Director Cian Caffrey, investing in breakthrough heavy industry technologies is arguably as important to a low-carbon future as the extraction of those minerals that will underpin it.

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Natural resources advisors RFC Ambrian Limited established RFC Ambrian Funds Management in 2023 to invest in decarbonization technologies and critical minerals.

Mr Caffery told Investor Insight there is a sweet spot for proven, underutilised and upcoming technologies to identify and address niche problems. The fund leverages the firm’s networks, technical capabilities and experience to help take companies with proven technology from start up through to commercialisation.

NextOre, an ore sensing and sorting technology similar to an MRI machine, is a company that RFC has helped to take from the laboratories at the CSIRO to IPO hopeful.

The technology is already making a real impact, and Mr Caffrey reckons there is plenty more to come.

“The decarbonization angle is interesting, and we look at it a bit more broadly,”he said.

“We’re long-term copper bulls. It’s the single most important commodity for electrification, but processing it is power and water intensive.”

“Because NextOre’s proven best in class technology has the ability to sense and sort the high-grade from low-grade ore in real time, it can not only reduce scope one emissions from the mine site by helping to lift the grade, it also reduces water consumption, reduces power and can actually unlock more economical copper from existing resources.”

“Often times, great scientists don’t want to be entrepreneurs. So we find the best technologies and work with the scientists to shepherd that technology to commercialisation,” he said.

“We aim to get involved at a level where we can embed commercial sensibility and strong corporate governance. In many respects, we get to shape the DNA of the company.”

“Getting ESG right is naturally important from a regulatory point of view, but also makes the company more investable when it goes to list and needs to attract the attention of larger funds.”

The jury is still very much out on hydrogen as a mass-mobility tool, but Mr Caffery said there are applications for up and coming technologies to have high-impact for niche problems.

“Green hydrogen has the potential to enable the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate industrial processes, in particular those which cannot easily be electrified,” he said.

“Green hydrogen will almost certainly have a role to play as a substitute for fossil fuel-derived hydrogen in large industries such as fertiliser and chemicals manufacturing in the short term and green steel and niche sustainable fuels in the longer term.”

RFC have recently co-founded and funded Hadean Energy, which is commercialising CSIRO’s unique tubular SOE hydrogen electrolyser technology.

“Hadean is a company we’re really excited about,” he said.

“It has a world-class science team and the technology has already exceeded key technical milestones.

“Smart money is pouring into electrolyser technologies, and we believe Hadean will soon be right up there with the very best.”

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