An Australian startup has raised A$3 million ($2.1 million) to build a pilot plant that it says could produce ammonia cheaper than conventional natural-gas-based plants without any carbon pricing — a claim that, if proven at scale, would reshape the cost structure of nitrogen fertilizer feedstock.

Facet Amtech, founded in 2024 by mechanical engineers Peter Richardson and James Bradley, has developed a multifunctional catalyst that makes ammonia directly from air and water. The seed round came from Main Sequence and Uniseed, and the cash will fund a pilot producing 1 kilo of ammonia per day in early 2027.

"If we can prove this [at scale], this could be a major disruption [to the ammonia market], not just an incremental improvement from a slightly better catalyst," said Richardson, who holds a PhD and spoke to AgFunderNews.

The scale-up path is staged: a 100-kilos-per-day pilot roughly two years after the first, then a 4 tons/day unit in the early 2030s — the scale Facet says is needed to de-risk industrial production. The next pilot also targets 2,000+ hours of continuous operation, a benchmark Richardson says industry partners have identified.

Why the chemistry matters for fertilizer costs

Most ammonia today — grey or green — requires two upstream steps: sourcing hydrogen and separating nitrogen from air. Grey ammonia derives hydrogen from natural gas via steam methane reforming, then combines it with nitrogen in the high-heat, high-pressure Haber-Bosch process. Green ammonia swaps in electrolytic hydrogen but still needs a dedicated hydrogen plant.

Facet strips out those steps. Its catalyst simultaneously extracts hydrogen from water or steam and reduces nitrogen from air, forming ammonia on a single surface. "Effectively our catalyst takes the water and does the separation of hydrogen from the water itself, and then separately does the ammonia formation on the same catalyst surface. It does those two reactions concurrently," Richardson said.

The economic argument rests less on catalyst efficiency than on plant simplification. A conventional Haber-Bosch plant runs multiple catalysts across hydrogen production and ammonia synthesis. "We're replacing all of those catalysts with just one," Richardson said. "Today, the majority of the cost of making ammonia is from the natural gas or from the electricity that goes into making the green hydrogen, which we're not doing. So we take out a bunch of that capital cost, and we're replacing that with one big reactor and one large batch of relatively cheap catalyst."

Collapsing steps into one reactor also cuts waste-heat losses: "We have much simpler waste heat recovery because we've only got basically the one reactor," he said.

The process needs heat and pressure, but at milder conditions than Haber-Bosch. Renewable electricity could supply much of the thermal input, with waste heat usable in some installations. Facet still hasn't decided whether filtered liquid water or steam offers the best economics, since converting water to steam takes energy.

The catalyst itself contains no platinum-group metals or rare earths. Facet manufactures it in-house from blended pure metal powders and heat-treats it in a furnace. "We anticipate that overall catalyst costs will be roughly on par or potentially even a bit cheaper than at a normal Haber Bosch plant," Richardson said.

One complication: the reactor currently outputs aqueous ammonia rather than gas, requiring a separation step before pressurizing, storage, and chilling — after which it can feed fertilizer production or be used directly.

Business model, not green premium

Facet is not chasing carbon credits or a green premium. "What we're striving for is being cheaper than grey ammonia without including any carbon pricing. It's a pure economic play," Richardson said. The company also rejects the small-scale distributed ammonia model pursued by other startups, envisaging plants of roughly 500 to 3,000 tons per day — comparable to incumbent facilities. It plans to license plant designs and supply catalyst to fertilizer producers rather than own plants itself.

"Facet Amtech is tackling a problem that sits at the intersection of energy security and industrial resilience. The company is building exactly the kind of deep tech, sovereign capability play we look for," said Emerald Scofield, investment manager at Main Sequence Ventures.

The firm has moved from the University of Newcastle campus to its own industrial site nearby, and has engaged global ammonia producers, technology providers, EPC firms, and offtakers. Several ammonia majors have offered to validate the technology through in-house catalyst testing and plant capital cost estimates. Still, Richardson acknowledges the industry wants pilot data before committing capital. Beyond the first scale-up tests, he expects funding to shift from venture capital toward strategic industry investors and government support as pilot costs climb.