Saudi PIF Closes $7bn Green-Hydrogen JV With Vale And Marubeni

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund has formally closed a $7 billion tri-lateral joint venture with Brazil's Vale and Japan's Marubeni to develop a green-hydrogen and ammonia production complex on the kingdom's Red Sea coast, in one of the largest cross-regional hydrogen commitments yet announced anywhere in the world.

The structure brings together a sovereign-investor anchor, a major commodity producer, and a Japanese trading house with established LNG and ammonia offtake relationships across East Asia. Under the agreed terms, PIF holds 51%, Vale 28%, and Marubeni 21%, with first-phase capacity targeted at 1.2 million tonnes of green ammonia per year and a final-investment decision on a second 1.5-million-tonne phase scheduled for early 2027.

The site selection — adjacent to NEOM but at a meaningful distance from the existing Helios Green Fuels project — gives the JV access to roughly 4 GW of dedicated wind and solar capacity that has already been pre-allocated by the Saudi authorities. Construction is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2026, with first ammonia exports targeted for 2029 once the offshore loading infrastructure is in place.

Commercially, the most important element of the deal is the offtake structure. Marubeni has committed to a 15-year tolling contract priced against a transparent index, and Vale has secured a multi-year volume to supply its iron-ore green-pellet pilot project in Brazil's northern industrial corridor. Roughly 70% of phase-one volumes are now under contract before construction has begun — a discipline measure that earlier hydrogen projects have notably failed to demonstrate.

For the wider hydrogen market, the deal sets two reference points. It establishes a credible pricing curve for green-ammonia long-term offtake, with all the caveats that come with private indices. And it confirms what observers of the sector have suspected for some time: the projects that will actually move from announcement to construction are the ones that combine sovereign capital, a credible offtaker, and a genuinely competitive renewable-electricity baseline. The Red Sea complex hits all three.