HyOrc targets Portugal waste-to-methanol debut with €6.7m EU grant
HyOrc Corporation, a Houston-based clean-energy infrastructure company listed on the OTCQB market, says it is preparing to commission its first commercial waste-to-methanol module in Portugal, backed by approximately €6.7 million in non-dilutive funding approved through the EU's Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) programme. The project is positioned by the company as the key inflection point between technical demonstration and repeatable commercial operation.
The Portuguese module is designed to process around three metric tonnes of refuse-derived fuel (RDF) per day and produce up to one metric tonne of low-carbon methanol daily. RDF is prepared from non-recyclable municipal and industrial waste that would otherwise be sent to landfill. HyOrc says its gasification and synthesis process converts that material into methanol while co-generating electricity for plant operations.
The business model
Chief executive Reginald Fubara, speaking in an executive interview published this week, described a dual-revenue structure in which waste producers pay a tipping fee for material collection and the company then sells the resulting methanol. "Unlike conventional fuel producers that pay for feedstock, waste producers pay us a tipping fee to take the material," he said. "That means we potentially get paid when we receive the feedstock and again when we sell the methanol."
The company says it completed a 60-day continuous operational run at its facility in Tamil Nadu, India, during 2026, producing methanol at 99.98% purity. HyOrc reports that this campaign was independently witnessed by Bureau Veritas, a French testing and certification group, with no non-conformities recorded. Management says this has shifted the company's internal focus from technical feasibility to commercial scalability, with the Portugal plant intended to demonstrate that the process can be replicated profitably at module scale.
HyOrc has not disclosed the capital cost of the Portuguese facility, a signed offtake price for its methanol, or the identity of any committed offtake counterparty.
Market context
Waste-derived methanol sits at the intersection of two growing cleantech themes: waste valorisation and low-carbon shipping fuels. The International Maritime Organization's tightening greenhouse-gas targets and the EU's FuelEU Maritime regulation are creating demand-side pull for lower-carbon bunkers, with methanol gaining traction alongside ammonia and liquefied biomethane as a candidate fuel. A growing fleet of methanol-capable vessels is already on order at several of the world's largest container shipping companies, which Fubara cited as evidence of a ready end market.
Several larger and better-capitalised developers are also pursuing waste-to-methanol or green methanol routes, including plants powered by electrolytic hydrogen. HyOrc's competitive argument rests on feedstock economics: by starting with a negative-cost input, it claims a structural cost advantage over green methanol routes that begin with expensive renewable-electricity-derived hydrogen.
The STEP programme, launched under the EU's response to the US Inflation Reduction Act's industrial subsidies, is designed to support strategic European clean-technology production. The €6.7 million grant is non-dilutive, meaning it does not require the company to issue new shares, but represents a modest sum relative to the capital typically required to scale waste-processing infrastructure to commercial volume.
What to watch
HyOrc is also advancing two parallel programmes: Project Phoenix, a collaboration with GB Railfreight in the United Kingdom targeting methanol use in heavy rail, and an evaluation of its gasification technology for distributed power generation in AI data centres and other off-grid markets. Both remain at early stages.
For investors, the pivotal near-term milestone is first methanol production from the Portuguese facility. The company trades on the OTCQB, a lighter-touch US marketplace for early-stage and development-stage companies, and has not disclosed revenue from commercial methanol sales to date. Validation of the dual-revenue tipping-fee model at the Portugal site would be the first concrete evidence that the platform can generate repeatable cash flow at commercial scale.