What they do.
CullBeck makes iron without coal. Its reactor is an electrically heated continuous fluidised bed, developed over nearly a decade at the Paihau Robinson Research Institute at Victoria University of Wellington. It uses hydrogen to strip oxygen from iron ore, and reduces that ore in under 150 seconds rather than the eight hours or more a blast furnace takes.
The plant is compact and modular, built in 10-tonne-per-hour units and replicated as demand grows. That is a far lower-capital proposition than a conventional blast furnace. The process also runs on low-cost titanomagnetite, the iron-rich black sand that existing systems cannot use at all. Its only by-product is water, plus a high-value slag containing vanadium and titanium.
Why it matters.
Steelmaking produces roughly 8% of global CO₂ emissions. Iron, its raw material, still comes almost entirely from blast furnaces, which are multi-billion-dollar megaprojects that run on coal. The coal does two jobs. It heats the furnace, and it chemically strips the oxygen out of the ore. The industry's cost structure and its emissions problem have the same root.
CullBeck attacks that root. Fast, low-energy reaction kinetics lower the energy used per tonne of iron, which lowers cost and emissions at the same time. The emissions case rides along with the cost case, so it does not depend on customers paying a green premium. CullBeck will initially run on grey hydrogen, which still removes the direct emissions of the reduction step and roughly halves overall emissions at a cost per tonne comparable to coal-based methods. As green hydrogen supply scales, the same reactor takes emissions close to zero.
Where they are now.
- Validated to Technology Readiness Level 5, proven at laboratory scale with industry partners, on nearly ten years of reactor development and about $8 million of government research funding.
- Full intellectual-property transfer completed from Victoria University of Wellington, with the researchers who invented the process on the founding team.
- NZ Steel has signed an MOU for CullBeck to build a 2.5-tonne-per-hour demonstration plant beside its Glenbrook facility, the one site already processing ironsand at scale.
- A foundational customer supply agreement signed with an Australian energy company, before the demonstration plant has broken ground.
- An oversubscribed $15 million equity round, plus $5 million of revenue committed by a foundational customer, taking the total secured to $20 million. Ground-breaking at Glenbrook is targeted for early 2027.
The CVCF investment.
CullBeck is the first company backed across both 2040 Ventures funds. Punakaiki Fund and Climate Fund 2 together contributed more than half of the equity round, alongside Outset Ventures, which led the round, with Aspire (New Zealand Government), Motion Capital, K1W1 and Icehouse Ventures. The two funds hold a combined 13.33% shareholding, and Lance Wiggs has joined the CullBeck board.
Very few companies fit both mandates. Climate Fund 2 backs companies where the climate impact is the commercial opportunity, not a constraint on it. CullBeck is exactly that. It is a licensing business built on defensible IP, targeting one of the world's largest industries on cost, with a large reduction in emissions from a hard-to-abate industry as the consequence.
This is not green iron. It is cheaper iron that happens to be very green.
· Martin Hacon, CEO and co-founder, CullBeck