Building the Pacific’s Green Steel Company: Our Investment in CullBeck

Steel has been made the same way for three centuries. Iron ore goes into a blast furnace with coking coal and comes out as molten iron; along with roughly 8% of the world's CO2 emissions. The cleaner alternatives that do exist only work on a narrow slice of the world's iron ore. Hydrogen can replace coal for standard iron ore, and that's already happening at scale in Europe. But titanomagnetite, the iron rich sand found in huge quantities around the Pacific Rim, doesn't play well with those reactors. For countries sitting on some of the largest titanomagnetite deposits on Earth, that has meant no real path to low carbon steel, just a valuable resource sitting unused beneath their own coastlines.

That is why we are excited to announce Outset's investment in CullBeck.

The missing layer in the ironmaking stack

Steel decarbonization has mostly meant tinkering around the edges of an old process: capture a bit more carbon, blend in more scrap, and squeeze a little more efficiency out of the blast furnace. Hydrogen based direct reduced iron is the technology that could actually replace it, and it works, but it’s only for the ore types it was built around.

That leaves us a massive resource on the sidelines. Titanomagnetite ironsand sits in multibillion tonne deposits along the Pacific Rim, including New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Although it is not the world’s most abundant iron ore, it can be inexpensive to extract and magnetically concentrate and remains underused by the steel industry.

A large and urgent steel market

Global steel production runs at nearly two billion tonnes a year, making it one of the biggest and most carbon intensive industries on the planet. Every tonne made the old way is getting more expensive, as buyers and regulators start putting a real price on embodied carbon.

That pressure is already showing up in customer demand. CullBeck signed an Australian industrial customer to a supply agreement worth more than NZ$1 billion in potential orders before CullBeck has even broken ground on its first demonstration plant. Demand for a cheaper, cleaner way to make iron is running ahead of the technology's build out.

Enter CullBeck

CullBeck has built a reactor that turns titanomagnetite ironsand into iron in about 150 seconds. A conventional blast furnace takes 8 to 10 hours to do the same job.

The system is modular, built in units that can be replicated as demand grows rather than the single giant plants that has historically defined traditional steelmaking. The only byproducts are water and a slag stream with recoverable vanadium and titanium. CullBeck has an agreement with NZ Steel to build its demonstration plant at Glenbrook with construction targeted for early 2027 and the plant operational by 2028.

The round totaled NZD $15 million, said to be the largest first raise ever for a New Zealand deep tech company, plus a further $5 million from their anchor customer. Outset invested in January to help form the company ahead of this current round that we helped kick off with 2040 Ventures alongside support from Aspire (NZGCP), Motion Capital, K1W1, Punakaiki Fund, and Icehouse Ventures. Outset's Angus Blair is joining the board.

World class team, with strong execution to show

CullBeck grew out of Victoria University of Wellington's Robinson Research Institute, founded by the people who invented its core reactor process. CEO Martin Hacon has spent more than 40 years in the steel industry. CFO Chris Jansen brings 15-plus years across energy and resources. Chief Scientist Chris Bumby co-invented the reactor technology, alongside Bavinesh Maisuria, who developed the reactor itself. Matt Watson, who has scaled deep tech ventures before, rounds out the founding team.

Their pitch is simple, and it isn't really about being green. As Hacon puts it: "This isn't green iron. It is cheaper iron that happens to be very green." The team's bet is that better economics, lower costs, cheaper ore, faster output, win on their own, with lower emissions coming along for the ride.

Why we invested

At Outset, we back deep technology companies going after large, enduring markets, led by founders who understand both the engineering and the industry they're stepping into. CullBeck sits at the intersection of industrial decarbonization and a resource everyone else had written off: iron sand that a decade of hard reactor R&D has turned from a stranded asset into a real advantage.

Outset is proud to back CullBeck as they build the ironmaking technology that turns New Zealand's iron sands into the next generation of cheaper, cleaner steel, for New Zealand and for every iron sand-rich economy across the Pacific.