Plug Power has shipped 155 GenDrive units

Plug Power Inc reports a significant increase in orders over six months, and the company expects the momentum to continue.

The orders totaled USD25 million from 15 May o 14 November, reports Andrew J Marsh, chief executive officer and president.

Plug Power says it is in negotiations with large customers seeking sales agreements to power forklift fleets at multiple distribution centres and anticipates completing several of these agreements shortly.

"The demand for fuel cells in the materials handling market has always been robust," Marsh says. "Our customers are expanding their successful deployments - and the word is spreading in the industry. Now that we have a strong balance sheet, that demand is turning into orders."

Plug Power shipped 155 GenDrive units during the third quarter ended 30 September - down from 186 units during the comparable 2012 period. As of 30 September, Plug Power reported a backlog of 1,162 unit orders with a value of USD20.2 million.

Marsh says Plug Power has the capacity to make 2,500 units per fiscal quarter and has faith in the ongoing delivery capability of key supplier Ballard Power Systems Inc of Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.

Among it recent deals, Plug Power received an order from Kroger Company for 201 GenDrive units to deploy at a site in Stapleton, Colorado. Kroger of Cincinnati, Ohio is the largest grocery store chain and second largest food distributor in the US.

"Kroger has realised the benefits provided by GenDrive through previous fleet deployment," he says. "Kroger initially deployed 161 GenDrive units at its food distribution centre in Compton, California. GenDrive's unit uptime, productivity increases and operator acceptance at the Compton site gave Kroger the confidence it needed to deploy more GenDrive units at the Colorado site."

In addition, Plug Power received follow-up orders from the La Vergne, Tennessee plant of Bridgestone Corporation's Americas tyre operations. Bridgestone in La Vergne has used its current fleet for more than six years operating the units for more than 40,000 hours in an automatic guided vehicle application.

"Not only does Bridgestone's GenDrive fleet run over 21 hours a day for six years, but data shows the units lasted almost two times longer than the expected life of the product and four times longer than the life of a lead acid battery," Marsh reports. "We believe this is a testament to the long-term life of fuel cells versus batteries and can be leveraged to strengthen our value proposition."

Plug Power received USD500,000 in funding from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to demonstrate the viability of replacing diesel generators with hydrogen fuel cells for powering transport refrigeration units on trailers hauled by trucks that deliver perishable goods. The product will be based on the GenDrive architecture, which is currently used in Plug Power's forklift solutions.

For the third quarter, Plug Power had a loss of USD15.9 million on sales of USD4.6 million versus a loss of USD10.3 million on sales of USD4.8 million for the comparable 2012 period.