Pure Hydrogen inks MOU for 5 hydrogen buses in Saigon – days after Twiggy’s FFI reeled back in

Pure Hydrogen (ASX:PH2) has confirmed it’s executed an MOU with a Vietnam-based entity to develop hydrogen-fuelled buses for the southeast Asian jurisdiction.

The entity in question is a policy-advisory group called the ‘Vietnam ASEAN Hydrogen Club,’ VAHC for short.

The MOU envisions 5 buses provided by Pure’s vehicle fleet to be used as a demonstration of the fuel in Ho Chi Minh city (also known as Saigon.)

“We want to establish one of the first hydrogen demonstration project in Vietnam, at first for new mobility in the City,” VAHC exec chair Le Ngoc Anh Minh said.

Pure Hydrogen executive Scott Brown echoed Anh Minh’s comments and outlined the MOU process.

“The completion of the MOU follows an extensive period of negotiation and collaboration between the parties, and we look forward to working to delivery the HFC Buses and Hydrogen equipment to VAHC,” Brown said.

“Vietnam has made a clear policy commitment to significantly reduce carbon emissions from its extensive passenger transport networks across major cities, and we look forward to playing a key role and in spearheading that shift with our market-leading hydrogen vehicle fleet.”

While Pure Hydrogen is looking at overseas jurisdictions and its ultimate value proposition is quite a different ballgame to producing green hydrogen, it comes right after Twiggy Forrest pulled back Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) into Fortescue Metals.

The move was taken as a sector-wide signal for hydrogen players with many having questioned the ability of FMG to economically manufacture hydrogen gas.

In the background, interest in hydrogen broadly has steeply dropped off since 2021 when the COVID-borne energy supply chain collapsed and the alternative fuel also came to prominence on the back of UN climate conferences right before the pandemic.

PH2 last traded at 17.5cps.