Ineos partners with The Halo Trust to develop Grenadier

Thursday, 24 June 2021

Ineos and The Halo Trust have partnered up to develop the Grenadier 4x4.

Ineos is still hard at work on its Defender homage, the Grenadier 4x4 off-roader, and it has now tapped The Halo Trust to help further development with real-world applications.

The Halo Trust is the world’s largest humanitarian mine clearance and weapons disposal organisation. With a worldwide fleet of over 600 4X4 vehicles, the joint British and American charity operates off-roaders in some of the most remote and inhospitable places on the planet.

Ineos wants to develop a fleet of bespoke Grenadiers for Halo operations, with CEO Dirk Heilmann saying he can think of “no better organisation on Earth for helping us to develop Grenadier.”

The Grenadier is being deployed to help The Halo Trust clear mines and dispose of weapons.

“All the knowledge and insight Halo is sharing with us is incredibly valuable to the engineering programme, and will ultimately help us create the toughest, most capable vehicle for all users.”

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The two have been working together since 2020, when Ineos joined an active Halo operation in Angola. The vehicles had to negotiate pitted, rocky and occasionally undriveable roads.

“Seeing how drivers deal with the terrain and repair vehicles in challenging conditions and with only basic tools has helped shape the ongoing development of the Grenadier,” the company said in a release.

Over the next 12 months, more than 130 second-phase prototypes will be deployed as part of the vehicle’s 1.8 million kilometre testing and development programme. Grenadier prototypes will join active Halo projects, including in Kosovo. These development activities will be used by both Ineos and Halo to assess the vehicle’s on- and off-road capabilities, as well as the ease of service, maintenance and repair in the field.

The Grenadier is the brainchild of Ratcliffe, the billionaire founder of Ineos, and was developed in the wake of the demise of the original Land Rover Defender and the reduction of availability of utilitarian 4X4 workhorses in general.

Sitting on a traditional ladder chassis, the Grenadier features a steel body with aluminium 'hang-on' parts, such as doors and the bonnet. Initially it will be powered by a choice of either diesel or petrol BMW six-cylinder engines hooked up to an 8-speed ZF automatic transmission.

Ineos recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Hyundai to jointly investigate opportunities for the production and supply of hydrogen and the worldwide deployment of hydrogen applications and technologies.

The agreement also included the evaluation of Hyundai’s proprietary fuel cell system for the Grenadier as well, meaning it could well become the first hydrogen-powered off roader to be offered for public sale.