News Archive

Walbrook PR has been appointed by Acta plc (AIM: ACTA), a hydrogen energy company providing a lowest-cost solution for the onsite production of hydrogen, to manage communications with the financial media, research analysts and investors. Walbrook's account team will be Bob Huxford, Paul Cornelius and Nick Rome.

Hydrogen is the 'clean' energy carrier of choice to replace hydrocarbons such as gas and oil. However, currently 96% of hydrogen is produced from centralised petrochemical processes such as reforming natural gas. One of the key barriers to adoption of clean energy from hydrogen has been its delivery cost to the point of use. Indeed, up to 70% of the cost of delivered hydrogen is due to transportation costs. And if the hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, it is hardly a "clean energy" solution at all.

Over the past 10 years, Acta has invested £27m and amassed considerable intellectual property, developing a proprietary alkaline electrolyser technology enabling the low-cost onsite production of hydrogen from air and water. Acta's hydrogen production technology benefits from the obvious cost advantages of on-site hydrogen generation in addition to several other cost-saving advantages. These include no requirement for the use of exotic materials such as platinum in components, high electrical efficiency, and thanks to a high tolerance to water impurities, the ability to use rainwater, allowing easy refiling when installed in-field.

Acta's hydrogen generation technology has now been developed into a range of commercial solutions that have already been successfully tested in the field for several applications. One such application is for the multi-billion dollar back-up power for mobile telecommunications market, combatting the high frequency of power outages in emerging and developed economies.

In addressing these large and global market opportunities, Acta has recently signed a strategic agreement with global fuel cell company Reli-On, the leader in the North American telecoms back-up power market, to incorporate its technology into Reli-On's own on-site energy generation fuel cell system. In addition, Acta recently received a series of repeat commercial orders from M-Field, a leading fuel-cell system integrator, for telecommunications back-up power applications within Asia. Further to this, an announcement released today detailed sales of Acta's products to provide renewable energy storage for a low carbon residential and tourist development in Thailand and further orders from Heliocentris, the renewable energy supplier to the education sector.

In addition to the back-up power and renewable energy markets, Acta's solutions have been developed to address markets including on-site gas generation and electric vehicle refuelling. Together these markets are worth a combined value of €18.5 billion.

Paul McManus, Managing Director of Walbrook PR commented: "With our considerable experience in the clean energy sector we are delighted to be advising Acta on its financial media and investor relations programme.

"Acta has developed game-changing technology for on-site hydrogen production, which could prove to be one of the key enablers of the multi-billion dollar hydrogen energy market. Key players in this industry, such as fuel cell manufacturers in the US, have already witnessed a significant increase in their respective share prices as adoption of their products increases and we believe investors will soon turn their attention to the on-site hydrogen generation investment opportunity, of which ACTA is a clear market leader."