VANCOUVER, CANADA and HOBRO, DENMARK – Ballard Power Systems (NASDAQ: BLDP; TSX: BLDP) announced today that it has purchased all shares in the Company’s European subsidiary held by Dansk Industri Invest A/S (previously Dantherm Air Handling A/S) for a nominal value. As a result, Ballard now owns 100% of the Company’s subsidiary in Europe, ‘Ballard Power Systems Europe A/S’ (formerly Dantherm Power A/S).
Ballard held 57% of the shares in Ballard Power Systems Europe A/S before purchasing the remaining 43% of shares from Dansk Industri Invest A/S on January 5th, 2017. For a nominal payment Ballard acquired the remaining shares and obtained the cancellation of debt owed by Ballard Power Systems Europe A/S to Dansk Industri Invest A/S.
“This acquisition concludes a process over the past two years to secure 100% of our European subsidiary and rebrand our platform with the Ballard brand,” stated Tony Guglielmin, CFO of Ballard Power Systems and Chairman of the Board of Ballard Power Systems Europe A/S. “Europe is a critically important market for Ballard and we have taken important steps to strengthen our sales, engineering and service capabilities to support expected market growth.”
Jesper Themsen, Chief Executive Officer of Ballard Power Systems Europe A/S said, “Our long relationship with Dantherm and Dansk Industri Invest has been very positive and productive. However, together with our name change announced last September, this consolidation of ownership in our company under a single organization will simplify decision making and enable us to aggressively fulfill our recently expanded role of supporting the full breadth of Ballard’s activities in Europe.”
Ballard Power Systems has a total of approximately 50 employees at Ballard Power Systems Europe A/S in Hobro, Denmark and in Germany, France and the United Kingdom, all focused on supporting Ballard’s customers, projects and business development efforts in Europe. In addition, Ballard Power Systems Europe A/S will continue to sell and support the FCgen®-H2PM backup power system for deployment at critical IT and telecommunications infrastructure sites.
The local service and application engineering team will play a critical role in supporting Ballard-powered zero-emission fuel cell buses used in public transit revenue service on European roads. With fleet sizes growing, premium support services will be readily available from experienced support personnel, ensuring safe and reliable operation of these buses with maximum operational uptime.
Along with its recent name change, Ballard Power Systems Europe A/S has also adopted the Ballard brand, including logo and visual identity.
About Ballard Power Systems
Ballard Power Systems (NASDAQ: BLDP; TSX: BLDP) provides clean energy products that reduce customer costs and risks, and helps customers solve difficult technical and business challenges in their fuel cell programs. To learn more about Ballard, please visit
www.ballard.com.
Further Information: Guy McAree +1.604.412.7919,
media@ballard.com or
investors@ballard.com