Ballard [Nasdaq: BLDP] and Weichai, Ballard partner and major shareholder, announced they are building an LCS factory in China. Past tense, it has probably already been built. Production should begin this year.

The pre-launch event has been celebrated, so expect project completion on schedule. An opportune venture for Weichai, as it supplies the Chinese market with fuel cell stacks for trucks and buses. Ballard can cater to the rest of the world. In any event, only good news arrives from Ballard’s China operations. For example, the company’s stacks in commercial vehicles have already travelled 23 million cross-country kilometers (14 million miles) on hydrogen alone. What other fuel cell business can boast such powerful market endorsement?

“We have, I believe, the strongest possible platform in the China market and a huge competitive advantage because of our relationship with Weichai.”
Ballard CEO Randy MacEwen

Word has it Ballard has teamed up with four OEMs, Yutong, Asiastar, Zhongtong and Sinotruck, to manufacture a range of fuel cell buses, with 55 models available so far. Joining another three partner companies, Ballard also intends to bring fuel cell forklift trucks to market. If you ask me, the partner to watch here is not US-based Plug Power, which uses Ballard’s stacks in addition to its own, but rather Kion or Linde. The former owns forklift truck manufacturer Still. The latter has announced it will use fuel cells to power its latest equipment. Weichai, by the way, is Linde’s major shareholder.

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read more in H2-international August 2020

Risk warning
Share trading can result in a total loss of your investment. Consider spreading the risk as a sensible precaution. The fuel cell companies mentioned in this article are small- and mid-cap businesses, which means their stocks may experience high volatility. The information in this article is based on publicly available sources, and the views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author only. They are not to be taken as a suggestion of what stocks to buy or sell and come without any explicit or implicit guarantee or warranty. The author focuses on mid-term and long-term prospects, not short-term gains, and may own shares in the company or the companies being analyzed.

Author: Sven Jösting, written June 13^th, 2020