Industrial engine manufacturer MAN Energy Solutions, part of the Volkswagen group, will invest €500 million (US$554.36 million) in its subsidiary H-TEC Systems to ramp up its green hydrogen strategy.
The investment will be spent over the next few years in order to mass-produce PEM electrolysers as well as increase its workforce in the development and production phases.
Uwe Lauber, CEO of MAN Energy Solutions said the next step was to scale and set up a “highly automated serial production” as green hydrogen will increasingly become a primary energy source in the next decade.
Lauber added: “We are transforming H-TEC Systems into one of the world’s leading players in the field of PEM electrolysis.”
The company’s main operation is in the production and development of PEM electrolysers and electrolysis stacks.
Being part of the Volkswagen Group, H-TEC Systems will have access to the expertise and experience of the German automaker, especially in areas relating to production scaling and supplier-based series production business.
Following the investment to scale up production of PEM electrolysers, its management team has been reshuffled with Robin von Plettenberg installed as the new CEO and chief sales officer of H-TEC Systems, Frank Zimmermann will be the chief financial officer and Marius Zasche the chief technology and operations officer.
The newly appointed CEO, von Plettenberg, said: “Over the next few years, we will see increasingly larger projects, such as those for integrating entire wind farms. We are increasingly expecting projects on a scale of over 100 megawatts and, in the medium term, are also predicting structural changes in the market for multi-gigawatt large-scale plants, which are used in particular to export hydrogen and supply industrial sectors worldwide.”