Ballard Power Systems plans to deepen its global manufacturing footprint in Europe, the United States and China to support global market demand growth through 2030. 

As part of its ‘local for local’ strategy, Ballard has entered into an investment agreement with the government of Anting in Shanghai’s Jiading District to establish its new China headquarters, membrane electrode assembly (MEA) manufacturing facility and R&D centre at a site strategically located at the Jiading Hydrogen Port, in one of China’s leading automotive industry clusters.

Ballard plans initially to produce approximately 13 million MEAs, which will supply approximately 20,000 engines and achieve significant capacity expansion of this facility in future phases.

The facility will also include space to assemble approximately 600 engines annually to support the production and sale of Ballard engines in the rail, marine, off-road and stationary markets in China, as well as for certain export markets.

“Our global manufacturing vision for 2030 is to have scaled ‘local for local’ manufacturing of leading fuel cell engines and components in our core regional markets of Europe, North America and China to support future industry growth patterns and volumes across our verticals,” says Randy MacEwen, Ballard’s chief executive officer. “With our continued high conviction on long-term scaled adoption in China of fuel cell electric vehicles for medium- and heavy-duty motive applications, we are now addressing long-term capacity in that market for our proprietary MEAs.

“We believe China is a market headed for a significant demand break-out as hydrogen infrastructure scales over the coming years and as our new MEA production facility comes on line.”

Ballard has also announced a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Weichai Power whereby Weichai Power plans to make an equity investment for 2% of Ballard’s new MEA manufacturing company.