Plug Power will supply a North American wire and cable manufacturer with 50 hydrogen-powered forklifts and a refuelling station for use at its Texas distribution site.
Under the deal, Georgia-headquartered Southwire will deploy the Plug fuel cell-powered forklifts at its Dallas-Fort Worth facility, using hydrogen produced by one of Plug’s production sites in Georgia, Tennessee or Louisiana.
The US hydrogen firm will also provide onsite fuel cell servicing for an initial five-year period and maintain the refuelling station for 10 years.
By using the hydrogen forklifts, the companies say Southwire could “displace” over 450 tonnes of CO2 per year.
It comes after Plug announced it would refocus on its core material handling and electrolyser businesses as it looks to overcome tough financial challenges.
The company has already been powering material handling operations for the likes of Amazon and Walmart.
CEO Andy Marsh said the Southwire deal reflected Plug’s focus on its “core markets” and “return to the fundamentals that have driven our success.”
Earlier this month Plug logged over $970m in non-cash impairments and introduced further cost reduction measures as it recorded a $2.1bn loss in 2024.
Material handling. Point proven.
Just as the final weeks of 2022 were playing out, news emerged from Pennsylvania-based PDC Machines that it had kicked-off operations at its onsite hydrogen refuelling system for forklift trucks at Mitsubishi Gas Chemical’s Niigata Plant in Japan.
The SimpleFuel™ refuelling system offers onsite hydrogen generation, storage, and dispensing, producing high purity fuel cell-grade green hydrogen, to power up to seven fuel cell forklifts at the Mitsubishi plant.
In many ways it felt like a story that was a long time in-the-making. Not only has Japan been a hydrogen market building out for some time now, but PDC Machines has long been establishing its own technologies and footprint in the hydrogen space, from compression technologies through to full refuelling and dispense.
Indeed, at the time of the launch of the SimpleFuel product in 2019, Kareem Afzal, Partner and Vice-President of PDC Machines, said, “The SimpleFuel™ product is aimed at addressing specific needs of the hydrogen infrastructure in the automotive and industrial mobility applications.
“This technology can be used in homes, community centres, small businesses, or similar locations for refuelling hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles and material handling vehicles…
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