FORTESCUE FUTURE INDUSTRIES WAREHOUSE

Fortescue Future Industries’ (FFI) Green Energy Manufacturing (GEM) Centre is a milestone in the company’s strive for a global green energy transition. Hutchinson Builders appointed Elevation as the lead design consultant to progress early concepts developed by Geyer Design and With Architecture Studio. We were honoured to be involved in the realisation of Australia’s first multi-gigawatt electrolyser manufacturing facility enabling worldwide hydrogen production. The GEM Centre is on a 4-hectare site on the outskirts of Gladstone. It comprises a 12,500-square-metre electrolyser manufacturing facility with supporting 500-square-metre administration office. The sheer size of the building’s footprint, roughly equivalent to two football fields, was a key contributor to several design challenges. This included fire-engineered protection and separation strategies that permitted adequate safety measures while maintaining general operational requirements, and custom roof gutter profiles, brackets and sumps to manage rainwater collection and harvesting from the roof.