With their 2024 financial results freshly published and a pivotal year behind them, we interviewed Patrick Yau, Director of Investor Relations at Ceres, to explore the company’s evolving strategy, commercial vehicle ambitions, and whether their “asset-light, IP-heavy” approach will carry the day in a volatile green energy market.

A key driver behind this performance was a record order intake of GBP 112.8 million, fuelled by agreements with two new manufacturing licensee partners, Delta Electronics and Denso, and an electrolyser system partner, Thermax Ltd. These strategic partnerships signal strong future revenue streams for Ceres.

Bosch announced its decision to discontinue collaboration on solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technologies with Ceres and to consider selling its 17.44% stake in the company which led to a sharp decline in the British firm's share price.

This deal will create significant revenues for Ceres through licensing fees, royalty payments, engineering services and hardware over multiple years. The majority of the revenue generated will come through royalty payments on any hydrogen delivered to the end customers.

The aim is to target a module level of efficiency of less than 36kWh/kg and drive down the price, making it much more competitive as an alternative fuel/energy option in sectors such as heavy transportation.

This, according to Ceres, will help lead to the scale and speed of the development of new zero-emission technologies and help the company develop its fuel cell technologies for power generation and electrolysers for green hydrogen.

The 2023 strategic highlights include the second-generation stack design, offering performance improvements. Furthermore, a megawatt electrolyser demonstrator completed testing in Germany and has arrived at partner Shell’s R&D centre in Bangalore, India for further testing.

Costing GBP 100 million, the two-year demonstrator project of a one-megawatt SOEC system will be undertaken in 2024 at Bosch’s site in Stuttgart, with the aim of proving that the technology is both cost-effective and highly efficient in helping decarbonise industrial operations.

Ceres will be piloting a solid oxide electrolyser - which uses a ceramic as the electrolyte in the process of splitting water molecules to produce hydrogen gas - at Shell's R&D centre in Bangalore.

This partnership has many advantages, significant investment in the UK, the enablement of a state-of-the-art test facility to maintain Ceres’ technology leadership and support for our rapidly growing global partner base. We look forward to establishing a long-term partnership with HORIBA MIRA.

Ceres Power Holdings plc, based in Horsham, UK, and Weichai Power Co of Weifang, Shandong, have announced that they have signed a non-binding agreement with Robert Bosch Gmbh of Gerlingen, Germany, for the establishing of a three-way collaboration to deliver fuel cells to the Chinese market.

Ceres and RFC Power have entered a strategic partnership aiming to develop long-duration energy storage.