Methanol fuel cell developer and manufacturer Blue World Technologies (earlier post) has closed an investment round with an investment of more than €6 million. The company has also signed a leasing agreement on a new production building at the Port of Aalborg.

Blue World Technologies’ methanol fuel cells are combined with batteries in hybrid configurations. The complete system includes methanol reformer for fuel conversion, DC/DC for power conversion and fuel cell stack for power production. The fuel cell control unit governs the fuel cell system as well as communicates with the vehicle. The methanol fuel cell system is based on High-Temperature PEM technology and methanol to hydrogen reforming.

At the beginning of 2020, Blue World Technologies was expected to close an investment round, but COVID-19 threw a spanner in the works which resulted in the investment round not being realized at that time. At the end of November, Blue World Technologies announced the opening of an investment round; Blue World was in the subscription phase with several larger commitments from European investors with experience within methanol fuel cell technology.

Besides the larger investors, Blue World Technologies also opened the opportunity for smaller investors to join based on good previous experience from last year. Blue World Technologies ended up signing investments with 50 smaller investors each with a subscription with a minimum of €15,000.

Altogether Blue World Technologies raised €1 million from the smaller investors in less than two weeks. Together with the investments from the larger investors, Blue World Technologies closed the investment round with €6.4 million.

On the facilities side, Blue World Technologies will take over the new building on 1 January 2021 and will initiate installation and test of production equipment in the following months. The production facility will have a production capacity of up to 5,000 units (50 MW) per year. According to the plan, the initial production in the new production facilities is planned to start in mid-2021 as a pre-series production.

This first factory we are building are smaller than first planned, but it is still one of the world’s largest productions of methanol fuel cells. We are very much looking forward to starting the installation of the production equipment and to initiate the next phase in ramping up the production.

—CEO and Co-founder Anders Korsgaard

Blue World Technologies is continuing the planning of a production site with an aim to reach a full-scale commercial production capacity of 50,000 fuel cell units within three years.