Germany export credit agency (Euler Hermes) guarantees SMS group's cold-rolling complex export for H2 Green Steel's Boden, Sweden plant

Mechanism

Germany's export credit guarantee system (Hermesdeckung), operated by Euler Hermes Aktiengesellschaft as mandatary of the Federal Republic under oversight of an interministerial committee (Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Federal Ministry of Finance, Federal Foreign Office), provides state-backed insurance against buyer default, political risk, and manufacturing risk for German capital-goods exporters. In this case the guarantee package (manufacturing risk cover, supplier credit cover, contract bond cover, buyer credit cover) supports SMS group's supply of a cold rolling and strip-processing complex to H2 Green Steel's Boden plant — part of a wider order in which SMS group is delivering direct-reduction, electric-steelmaking, and casting/rolling technology, and thyssenkrupp nucera is separately supplying electrolysis equipment for the site's on-site hydrogen production.

The plant is designed to produce steel via hydrogen-based direct reduction rather than the conventional blast-furnace/coke route, eliminating most process CO2 emissions. Official German government commentary framed the guarantee as support for "the decarbonisation of the German export industry" via backing "the latest and most innovative technologies from Germany" — positioning export credit guarantees as an instrument of green-industrial export promotion rather than purely commercial risk-sharing.

Downstream implications

• Extends the German state's export-credit toolkit into green-steel

process-technology exports, a segment where SMS group, Primetals, and Danieli compete globally for hydrogen-DRI retrofit and greenfield contracts

• Signals continued state willingness to underwrite large European

hydrogen-steel projects even as several 2025-26 green-steel offtake and financing plans elsewhere in Europe have slipped or been rescoped

• Part of the broader Western industrial-policy stack of state loans,

guarantees, and equity that has reoriented capex toward decarbonised heavy-industry supply chains (see theme)

Open questions

• Guaranteed value not disclosed by either Euler Hermes or GTA; total SMS

group order value for the Boden site has been reported at over €1 billion in trade press, but that figure was not independently confirmed against a primary company or government source for this filing

• Whether comparable Hermesdeckung cover has been extended to the parallel

thyssenkrupp nucera electrolysis-equipment export to the same site