RIFT, based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, has announced that it has secured €113.8 million in financing to scale Iron Fuel Technology and move into commercial deployment. Through its €83.1 million Series B round, the company intends to prepare and execute its first commercial project, aimed at decarbonising industrial heat at scale.

“As a consortium, we have closely followed RIFT’s development and see strong potential for tangible industrial impact,” stated Tim van den Brule, Investment Director at PGGM Infrastructure. “Many industrial innovations stall in the transition from demonstration to realisation. We have deliberately chosen a financing structure that provides capital through to execution.”

Building a commercial facility

RIFT intends to construct a commercial production facility from which iron fuel will be supplied to multiple industrial customers integrating Iron Fuel Boilers into their heat processes. This plan follows the company’s first commercial contract, which was signed in 2025 with Kingspan Unidek. RIFT plans to have the facility operational in 2029.

The project is expected to deliver approximately 340 GWh of industrial heat per year. Over a fifteen-year lifetime, that amounts to roughly 5 TWh of decarbonised heat, resulting in more than one million tonnes of avoided CO₂ emissions.

“We are proud of what the team has achieved so far. Over the past years, we have demonstrated that Iron Fuel Technology performs reliably in an industrial environment,” the company stated. “With this financing, we are moving into the next phase: preparing and executing our first commercial project.”

According to RIFT, industrial heat remains one of the most challenging parts of the energy transition. Sectors such as food processing, chemicals and building materials require continuous high-temperature heat for their production processes. Today, this heat is largely generated using fossil fuels, primarily natural gas.

For many applications, electrification is not readily deployable due to high temperature requirements, large power demand and limited grid capacity, thereby opening an opportunity for the deployment of scalable, CO₂-free alternative.

RIFT is able to offer such an alternative through a circular energy carrier based on iron. By replacing natural gas in industrial heat processes, high-temperature heat can be generated without direct CO₂ emissions.

Innovation funding

In addition to the Series B round, RIFT has been selected for a €30.7 million project under the EU Innovation Fund. The fund is one of the European Union’s key instruments to support large-scale innovative decarbonisation projects. The Innovation Fund is designed to help bridge the gap between demonstration and commercial deployment.

In this funding round, sixty-one projects were selected out of 359 applications. The support is said to strengthen the execution of RIFT’s first commercial project and reflects confidence in the scalability of the technology.