2023-05-25 07:30:44
Calvera Hydrogen began its foray into hydrogen in the 1980s. How has the company evolved in these 40 years?
Calvera is a family business founded in 1954. Starting in the 1980s, it entered the world of hydrogen and began to manufacture tube trailers, which at that time were already transporting hydrogen at high pressure (about 300 bar). ). The current owners of the company decided to bet more firmly on hydrogen in the early 2000s and began to make other developments. The first kit for a hydrogenerator was made in 2010. The first complete hydrogenerator was made in 2015 for Denmark. From there, we have executed countless projects. In Spain, two years ago we launched the first commercial hydrogen generator at a Cepsa gas station in Madrid for Scale Gas (Enagás), which currently supplies a fleet of Toyota Mirai, and since last year the TMB hydrogen generator has been in operation. the largest bus in Europe. Right now we have a dozen hydrogen plants running.
In these 40 years we have also built some 500 tube trailers, all in the gas phase. Last year we built the largest gas phase tube trailer in the world for Shell with 1,300 kilos, and ours is also the second largest tube trailer in the world of about 1,000 kilos for Air Products in Barcelona. All of this is making us, year after year, doubling our billing and maintaining our ebitda levels, something that is not very common, because if you look at the companies that trade on hydrogen, they all have debt, but we have zero debt. We are also opening offices in Europe and the US, mainly. In fact, 70% of our business is outside of Spain. Right now I think that the hydrogen actors, more than ambitious should be entrepreneurs. The EU is putting a lot of money into making hydrogen economically feasible in the near future, and if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re going to be on the front lines and find that return shortly.
Currently, they are expanding their factories. When will they be ready?
In addition to the Malpica and Épila plants, both located in Zaragoza, the first of which is focused on special welding and manufacturing of steel and other metal structures, while the second is mainly dedicated to manufacturing, final assembly and testing. of the equipment, we are building two new ships. There are 8,000 square meters more on a 30,000 square meter piece of land that we bought three years ago. We think they will be ready in about twelve months. One ship will be used to manufacture hydrogen generators (70% of them will be mass-produced and the remaining 30% according to customer requirements). The other warehouse will go to manufacture tube trailers. Two years ago we asked for a subsidy for both plants and they have granted it to us. Precisely, regarding the issue of subsidies for hydrogen projects, I would like to say that I believe that some were requested for rather theoretical projects. Hydrogen changes month by month and, currently, there are projects that are not going to be done because they are dead and some of these companies are not financially supported. What projects are good? Those who have presented large companies such as Enagás, Repsol, Petronor and Cepsa, because they have a very good group of professionals and engineers, a business plan and they know what to ask for and how to do it.
In the last year they have tripled the number of employees. How many people work at Calvera and how do they capture talent?
We are currently 125 people. A year ago we were 40. We started from an SME-type company and now we have the same structure as any Ibex company. We have all the departments: human resources, financial, legal, commercial, marketing, business development, proposals, security; in fact, we have been certified in ISO 45001 Security, something that many companies do not have. In the new warehouses we will put some 120 people that we are already hiring. We have a staff training plan. We have agreements with various professional training academies, we take students from the last year and those who pass certain conditions remain on the staff with a permanent contract.
In the sector there are rumors that they are exploring their exit to the BME. What is true in here?
To this day there is no news or announcement on this matter. What I can confirm is that we are looking for financing because we will need it to continue growing in the medium term. Within this capital raising there may be an IPO, the inclusion of a partner, simply credits or a mixture of everything. Among all the alternatives that we are considering, we will choose the best one, but for now, we are not in a hurry and, in the short term, we do not see an optimistic financing possibility, either on the stock market or with traditional financing, because the price of money is very high. At the moment we continue as a family business, growing at the very pace of our orders, which is very high.
How important is digitization in Calvera?
In a company like ours there are two fundamental things: R&D and training. Without this you are not going anywhere. We have 35 engineers dedicated to R&D for the development of new tube trailers, hydrogen generators, security systems and, in this R&D, we have included digitization, which consists of new communication and Internet of Things (IoT) programs. to collect data from the equipment itself to help us improve it, know where the failures are and reduce costs. Thanks to the Internet of Things we can also collect data from hydrogen plants to learn about their maintenance and then be able to make a logistics system of how hydrogen should be moved between all sites.
Right now all our teams already start with a data transmission system. In this regard, we have opened an office only for R&D in a specific region of Spain that we will announce shortly. It’s called Calvera Hydrogen Innovation. The inauguration will be after the summer, but we already have people working.
#financing #grow #IPO #partner #credit