Plug Power Inc reports shipping 170 units of its fuel cell products during the third quarter of 2010, compared to six units shipped in 2009's comparable period.

Commercialisation continues in the North American material handling market, the firm says.

"Plug Power has grown tremendously its GenDrive business during 2010," says Andy Marsh, chief executive officer. "But the pace at which our accomplishments have been realised is at a slower rate than we had expected. This is not atypical for a new, emerging technology."

March indicates the Latham-based firm's "sales pipeline is still strong" with customers continuing "to be fully engaged in the buying process".

The challenge for Plug Power "continues to be predicting the timing of these deals in this new market", he says.

Plug Power reports a loss of USD9.30 million on sales of USD5.75 million for the quarter ended 30 September. On that date, Plug Power had cash, cash equivalents and available-for-sale securities of USD20.7 million and net working capital of USD26.0 million.

The company continues trials with potential customers and has current plans for seven more trials at customer facilities. Collectively, the seven potential customers have more than 150 distribution centres and operate more than 20,000 forklifts.

Deployments of GenDrive technology have occurred on portions of the forklift fleets of "Sysco Houston, United Natural Foods Inc, BMW, Walmart Canada and FedEx Freight," Plug Power says.

"For Plug Power, the ultimate success is seeing a customer deploy our GenDrive products into operation," Marsh notes. "It's at that point that our mission of improving the business operations of our customers is fully realised."