Plug Power Inc of Latham and Axane SA of Sassenage, France completed formation in February of a joint venture targeting the European market for fuel cell-powered forklift trucks.

The venture is known as HyPulsion.

Axane is a wholly owned subsidiary of major industrial gas supplier Air Liquide SA of Paris.

In 2011, Plug Power announced plans for the joint venture.

Plug Power projects that the fuel cell market opportunity in Europe is larger than that in North America.

Plug Power made the disclosures in an 8 March report on its 2011 financial results.

During 2011, Plug Power received orders for USD46.1 million from materials handling customers including USD18.1 million worth of orders during the fourth quarter.

The 2,503 GenDrive unit order total in 2011 represents almost a five-fold increase over the 543 GenDrive unit orders that Plug Power received in 2010.

Currently, Plug Power has more than 2,000 GenDrive fuel cell units deployed at live customer sites. Units shipped during the fourth quarter included next-generation GenDrive architecture products that are designed to increase reliability and improve lift and towing capacity. The simplified GenDrive features 30% fewer components.

"The sales momentum that the company experienced in 2011 is continuing in 2012," says Andy Marsh, chief executive officer at Plug Power. "The fuel cell industry is going through a full-fledged renaissance, as applications from lift trucks to automobiles to on-site power generation become more broadly deployed."

Publicly traded Plug Power reported a loss of USD27.5 million on 2011 sales of USD23.2 million. The firm had a loss of USD7.2 million on sales of USD11.9 million for the fourth quarter ended 31 December.