Fortescue Metals | Fortescue Futures came up through the past two decades in the billion tonne per annum Western Australian iron ore industry and spent a lot of hard cash on the side with a commitment to make mining "clean" wrt climate side effects of mining, transporting, and processing large amounts of iron to steel.
That's pilot plants for all kinds of tech and wads of research cash to explore options (disclaimer: I've taken their cash at times).
Now that the laughing has died down a bit we have others, in this case former staff, spinning up green iron projects and asserting nothing of value left with them on their bounce.
Further fun, SMH and some other various Australian media outlets have owners | major share holders that absolutely detest Andrew Forrest, the Fortescue founder, and waste no opportunity to cast anything he does in the worst possible light.
Sounds like you're saying that these operations cannot be clean? Is it really wasted money, tho? Isn't it good they at least tried? Maybe I misread you. Why do they hate Forrest?
My take on the article is...I get the potential theft of IP being a legitimate concern and legal issue, similar to the Waymo/Tesla thing (IIRC). But, I also feel: take a step back, is it really so important? Like surely there are more pertinent issues pertaining to: A) a massive miner; and, separately to, B) a green energy (green mining?) startup. Especially given our current environmental / economic / political context, right? I don't know.
Also, seems like, if the opportunity is real there's plenty of market for everyone to benefit. I don't get why "the story" is about some tiff between former teammates when surely there are bigger stories out there relevant to either party.
The operations can and should be a lot cleaner than they were in the 1970s and Andrew Forrest has been committed to making mining cleaner from end to end (including the post processing of raw materials, in the case of iron ore to look for better ways to produce steel).
100% carbon neutral is a big ask, but it's possible to get a lot of the way there, and there's the parallel path of using large scale mining approaches to create green hydrogen derivitives in excess to export to places that can use it.
The hate comes from other billionaires who have lesser ethics, Forrest has a tendancy to call out colossal greed at the expense of the environment and people (he took the time to get an earned doctoral degree in marine biology) which makes the Clive Palmer's, Gina Rinehart's, Rupert Murdoch's, Kerry Packer's et al look bad. They enjoy swinging back.
> But, I also feel: take a step back, is it really so important?
These are fledgling industries and if someone invests literal billions into developing new unproven technology it matters if someone else takes that IP and makes a great deal of money from it with none of that flowing back to the risk taker who has gambled on those returns coming in and underwriting other developments in the same domain.
FFI is currently backed by 10% of FMG profits. This has led to analysts at bank Credit Suisse recommending in January that investors ditch shares in the profitable iron ore mining company, due to a lack of clarity on FFI’s project economics and the likelihood that its developments would be a “cash burn into the medium-term”.
> if the opportunity is real there's plenty of market for everyone to benefit. I don't get why "the story" is about some tiff between former teammates
Apparently Credit Suisse cares ... and none of this happens without financing.
