King and Wood Mallesons (KWM) is pleased to have advised Jet Zero Australia (Jet Zero), an Australian Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) developer, on its $14m investment funding for Project Ulysses, the company’s flagship SAF project in Townsville.
Jet Zero is developing Australia’s first Alcohol-to-Jet (AtJ) SAF facility, taking agricultural by-products and converting them into 102 million litres of SAF and 11 million litres of renewable diesel per annum.
The next stage of engineering activities for Project Ulysses will include a $36.8 million front-end engineering design (FEED) study to advance this commercial scale AtJ low carbon liquid fuel (LCLF) production facility and progress towards a final investment decision.
The $14 million in Commonwealth and Queensland funding represents the largest government funding commitment to a SAF project in Australian history. It follows over $30 million in private investment made into Jet Zero by investors, including project partners Qantas, Airbus and Idemitsu Kosan.
The jointly announced government funding represents $9 million of funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) as part of ARENA's Advancing Renewables Program, and $5 million funding from the Queensland Government through the Queensland New-Industry Development Strategy (QNIDS) to grow local production capabilities and establish SAF value chains in Queensland.
KWM acted as legal adviser assisting Jet Zero in obtaining the record government grant investment for Project Ulysses, as well as settling the two funding agreements.
The KWM team was led by Partner Claire Rogers with support from Solicitor Yasmin Frost.
Commenting on the deal, Claire Rogers said:
"Congratulations to Jet Zero Australia on this record government funding. We are excited to see the benefits Project Ulysses brings for domestic energy security as well as supporting a domestic SAF industry which is expected to enable up to 26,200 jobs across Australia by 2030”.
