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(Sharecast News) - Fuel cell and electric hybrid technology company Proton Motor Power has signed a 15-year lease agreement for a 13,500 square metre facility, it announced on Monday, to "substantially expand" its manufacturing, testing and development capacity.
The AIM-traded firm said the new site would supplement its current 6,000 square metre site in Puchheim, Germany, which would now become the development facility for stacks and hydrogen engines.
It said the new facility is located in the town of Fürstenfeldbruck, 12 kilometres from Puchheim and within the Munich metropolitan region.
The facility would be used for serial manufacturing, and would also be the location of the company's sales and marketing teams, as well as the maintenance and training centre.
Proton said the total land surface of the facility is 25,700 square metres, containing more than 13,500 square metres of usable space of which over 10,500 square metres could be dedicated to production, testing and development.
The rest of the space would be devoted to office usage.
It represented a sevenfold increase in the amount of space available for production when compared to the company's current premises.
Concurrently with the enhancement of production capacity, the directors of Proton said they had determined that the company would be enlarging the sales department, to meet their anticipated increase in demand.
"Hydrogen is the energy storage source of the future and awareness of this is increasing to a considerable extent both amongst the public and within industry," said chief executive officer Dr Faiz Nahab.
"This creates a strong market-pull for associated technologies such as fuel cells."
Dr Nahab said that was evidenced by discussions with existing customers for mid-term batch orders.
"With this background, the additional space provided by the new facility will give Proton Motor the required capacity to produce, test and deliver fuel cell hydrogen engines in line with this anticipated growing demand."
At 1100 BST, shares in Proton Motor Power Systems were up 2.67% at 11.29p.
Reporting by Josh White at Sharecast.com.