German P21 Receives 6 Million Euros Investment

Fuel cell company P21 GmbH concluded its first round of institutional financing today in the amount of 6 million euros.

The investment comes from an international consortium of venture capital investors. The lead investor is the British firm Conduit Ventures Ltd. Based in London, it specializes in investments in the sector of fuel cells and hydrogen technology. Other investment partners include Target Partners (Munich) and TechFund Capital Europe and its associated funds CDC Ixis Innovation (Paris).

In 2002, P21 secured seed financing of 1.3 million euros from a private investor (Eberhard Frber, founder of PCS and IXOS Software AG) and tbg of Bonn.

P21 plans to use the capital to launch its fuel cell system for emergency power supply in the growing market of uninterruptible power supply (UPS), especially for mobile communication base stations, which used to get emergency power exclusively from battery and generator solutions.

John Butt, Managing Partner at Conduit Ventures, adds, "Conduit Ventures has gone to great lengths to find the best investments in emergency power supply systems based on fuel cells, and we were impressed by the unique technology, top-class technical expertise, and qualified management team at P21. Its UPS fuel cell system has the potential to penetrate the market quickly, allowing P21 to become a leader in the envisioned market segment of emergency power systems with small and medium output in Europe and later globally.

P21 GmbH – Power for the 21st Century, was founded at the end of 2001 as a spin-off from the Vodafone / Mannesmann Group. It develops, produces, and markets PEM (polymer electrolyte membrane) fuel cell systems and related components.

The focus of development and production is especially on PEM fuel cell stacks with an output of 1 kW to 21 kW. The Company aims to penetrate the segment of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) – particularly for emergency power to mobile communication base stations – as the current technical status of fuel cells already fulfills the product requirements for this market segment. In the long term, other stationary and mobile applications in other strategic markets are to be added.