Phelan Green Saldanha Bay eSAF

Phelan Green Hydrogen, part of the Phelan Green Group, is developing a Power-to-Liquids e-fuels facility at Saldanha Bay in the Western Cape province of South Africa. The project was first launched in November 2023 as Phelan eFuels South Africa, an $800 million investment sized to produce 80,000 metric tonnes of green hydrogen and 400,000 metric tonnes of e-methanol per year for export to the EU and UK. On June 16, 2026, Phelan Green Hydrogen announced it had licensed Johnson Matthey Catalyst Technologies' (JM CT) HyCOgen™ and FT CANS™ technologies (the latter jointly developed and co-owned by Johnson Matthey and bp) for a substantially scaled-up version of the project now structured around electro-sustainable aviation fuel (eSAF) production: HyCOgen catalytically converts CO₂ and electrolytic green hydrogen into carbon monoxide, which is then combined with additional hydrogen to form syngas; FT CANS converts the syngas into synthetic crude oil; and the synthetic crude is upgraded to synthetic paraffinic kerosene. The reframed project carries a total investment of R47 billion (more than £2 billion), with Phase 1 sized to produce approximately 35,000 tonnes of eSAF per year and full buildout expected to deliver approximately 140,000 tonnes of eSAF per year for sale into EU and UK markets; construction is expected to begin by the end of 2026 and the facility will be Johnson Matthey's first HyCOgen and FT CANS deployment in Africa. The CO₂ source for the e-fuels synthesis loop has not yet been publicly disclosed.