Ceres Power enters strategic collaboration with AVL

(Sharecast News) - Fuel cell and electrochemical technology company Ceres Power has signed a strategic collaboration with powertrain engineering consultancy AVL, it announced on Thursday, to accelerate customer adoption and product development of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology for numerous transportation, stationary and other applications.
The AIM-traded firm said AVL hjad 20 years of fuel cell engineering experience, describing it as the world's largest independent company for the development, simulation and testing of all types of powertrain systems.

Under the terms of the collaboration, both parties could continue to market and licence their technology to individual customers.

Ceres said that, by bringing their intellectual property together, the two companies would be able to offer customers "one of the most comprehensive" intellectual property portfolios for SOFC systems, and innovate higher performance solutions and new applications.

Those in turn could be jointly licensed to customers, creating royalty revenue opportunities that would be shared between the two partners.

Access to AVL's business development resources would "significantly expand" Ceres' global reach to identify applications and customers who would benefit from its technology, the board said.

That greater access to customers and product applications would enhance the company's ability to scale the business, and to generate "significant" value through its licensing model, it explained.

In turn, AVL would gain access to Ceres' systems technology as its integration partner, with the directors confirming that the agreement would not affect existing or future programmes with current partners.

It was expected that system customers from the relationship with AVL would drive demand from Ceres' stack manufacturing partners, currently Bosch and Doosan, which in turn would generate stack royalty payments for Ceres.

"The potential for Ceres' technology to play a role in the decarbonisation of the global energy system is substantial, and this collaboration with AVL is a significant step in our strategy to accelerate its adoption in an expanded number of applications and markets," said chief executive officer Phil Caldwell.

"As a licensing business, our ability to scale depends on successfully embedding our technology with a greater number of customers and AVL's global footprint, engineering scale and track-record in the fuel cell market, makes them an ideal partner for Ceres."

At 1114 GMT, shares in Ceres Power Holdings were down 1.91% at 1,055.48p.