AM Green Wins Germany's H2Global Asian Auction With a €585 Million Green Ammonia Deal From Kakinada
AM Green has been named sole winner of the Asian lot in Germany's state-backed H2Global auction, securing a 10-year contract worth at least €585 million to ship renewable ammonia from Kakinada to Germany from 2029.
India has spent the past three years talking about becoming an exporter of green molecules. This week it got something closer to proof. AM Green Ammonia (India) Pvt Ltd has been named the sole winner of the Asian lot in the latest auction run under H2Global, the German government-backed programme that buys renewable fuels abroad and sells them into Europe.
Under the award, HINT.CO GmbH (Hintco), the trading intermediary that runs H2Global's auctions, will buy renewable ammonia from AM Green over 10 years for a minimum value of €585 million. First deliveries to Germany are expected in 2029.
What was awarded
The ammonia will come from Phase 2 of AM Green's Kakinada project in Andhra Pradesh. The company is converting an existing natural-gas-based ammonia and urea complex there into a plant that uses alkaline electrolysis to make hydrogen from water, and then ammonia from that hydrogen.
The feedstock matters because of the product's European label. The ammonia is being bought as an RFNBO, a "renewable fuel of non-biological origin". That is the EU's term for hydrogen and hydrogen-derived fuels made from renewable electricity. The rules on what qualifies are strict: the power has to be demonstrably renewable, and its timing and sourcing have to line up with the electrolyser's operation.
AM Green's answer is what it calls a round-the-clock renewable power architecture backed by pumped-hydro storage. Solar and wind are intermittent, and an ammonia plant runs best at a steady load. Pumped hydro, which pumps water uphill when power is cheap and releases it through turbines when it is needed, lets the company smooth that supply. It says this is designed to meet the EU's requirements.
Shipping is the last link. The ammonia is to leave from Kakinada's seaports, next to the production site, which avoids a long inland haul.
The company describes the award as a step towards industrial-scale exports. Deliveries and operating performance remain ahead.
How H2Global works
H2Global exists to fix a chicken-and-egg problem. Green hydrogen and its derivatives cost more to make than their fossil equivalents, so producers struggle to raise finance without long-term buyers. Meanwhile, European buyers hesitate to sign long contracts at prices far above today's market.
The German-backed mechanism sits in the middle. Hintco signs long-term purchase contracts with producers abroad through competitive tenders. It then resells the product in Europe through shorter-term auctions, and public funding covers the gap between the two prices. The result is bankable offtake for the producer, and price discovery for the European market.
The programme's pilot auction set the template. Its results, published in 2024, went to Fertiglobe, the ADNOC-backed fertiliser group, for renewable ammonia produced in Egypt and delivered into Europe at €1,000 per tonne. The latest round split the world into regional lots. According to trade publication Hydrogen Insight, Hintco plans to publish full results before the end of 2026, alongside the outcomes of the other lots covering Africa, North America, South America and Oceania.
Why this matters for India
India's National Green Hydrogen Mission has set a target of five million tonnes of green hydrogen a year by 2030, and has always leaned on exports to justify the scale. Domestic demand will take years to build. Refineries and fertiliser plants can absorb some output, but the big early buyers are in Europe, Japan and South Korea, where policy is already forcing industrial users to cut emissions.
A 10-year contract with a German state-backed buyer does three things for that strategy.
It supports the commercial case. Winning a competitive international tender means an Indian project can meet EU compliance rules with the offer ranked first in its lot. That will matter to lenders financing the next wave of Indian projects.
It converts brownfield assets. Kakinada already had an ammonia and urea complex. Retrofitting it with electrolysis, rather than building a greenfield plant, reuses existing synthesis units, storage and port links. This is a template other Indian fertiliser sites could follow.
It puts the storage question on the table. Round-the-clock renewable supply is the hardest engineering problem in green ammonia. Pumped hydro is AM Green's answer. If it works at Kakinada, it strengthens the case for pairing large storage with export-oriented electrolysis.
AM Green already has other European links. It has signed earlier supply agreements, including a binding deal with Germany's Uniper reported in 2025 and a 2024 term sheet with Yara Clean Ammonia. The H2Global award is different because it comes out of a competitive, publicly backed tender rather than a bilateral commercial deal.
What to watch
Deliveries are three years away, and a lot has to go right before then: commissioning the electrolysers, proving the round-the-clock power supply, certifying the ammonia under EU rules, and working out the shipping logistics. The full H2Global results due later this year will also show how AM Green's price compares with winners in other regions.
For now, the signal is clear. An Indian producer has competed for a European government-backed green-molecule contract, on European terms, and won. For an industry that has had many memorandums of understanding and few binding contracts, that counts for a lot.
Sources
Core announcement or reporting
Image: AM Green. Official AM Green logo; company identity, not an operating plant. Original source.