The situation
A large-scale green hydrogen and ammonia production programme in the Gulf. Projects of this type carry a specific financing problem: the capital intensity is conventional project finance, but the revenue side is not. Offtake markets are immature, pricing benchmarks are thin, and the technology risk sits in equipment with limited operating history at scale.
The constraint
Lenders will size debt against contracted cash flows. When a meaningful share of production has no long-dated offtake at a bankable price, the sizing conversation stalls — and the sponsor's instinct is usually to argue about the discount rate rather than to fix the underlying evidence.
What Zenith built
Debt sizing and sculpting to a DSCR profile that held across the production ramp rather than only at steady state.
DSCR and lock-up covenant modelling with headroom tested scenario by scenario.
Commodity price and production scenario analysis spanning hydrogen, ammonia, and input power cost, run as a matrix rather than as three separate sensitivities.
Cash flow waterfall structuring across the debt stack.
Capital structure optimisation across senior and subordinated tranches.
The transferable point
On emerging-technology infrastructure, the modelling job is to make the uncertainty legible rather than to argue it away. A lender that can see exactly which assumption breaks the covenant, and by how much, can price it. A lender who can't, declines.
Last reviewed August 2026