New Energies, new possibilities

Hydrogen Technology World Expo 2026 will take place at Hamburg Messe from 20 to 22 October, alongside Carbon Capture Technology World Expo. The co-located event is the world’s largest trade fair for hydrogen and CCUS technologies, with more than 1,000 exhibiting companies, 20,000 expected attendees and more than 200 expert speakers. The three-day conference will combine strategic discussions with latest technical advancements across hydrogen value chain, including production and infrastructure, hydrogen & CCUS markets and regulations, fuel cells and end-use application with a special focus on commercial deployments. The event has increasingly become a meeting point not only for large project developers and established equipment suppliers, but also for specialized component manufacturers and materials companies seeking customers and partners in this rapidly evolving world.

Chinese participation will be larger than at any previous edition of the event. A review of the 2026 exhibitor list identifies around 46 Chinese companies, covering a wide scope of the hydrogen equipment value chain. Their products range from electrolyser stack and systems to catalysts, membranes, MEA, bipolar plates, as well as other key components. Other exhibitors supply rectifiers, BoP equipment, and hydrogen storage solutions. The breadth of the Chinese presence reflects both the growing interests of Chinese suppliers on European market and their fast improving technological capability.

Electrolyser manufacturers and suppliers of key materials and components form the largest group among the Chinese exhibitors. Around 27 companies fall into these categories, accounting for well over half of the Chinese presence at the trade fair. This concentration reflects China’s increasingly dominant position in global electrolysis deployment and manufacturing. According to the IEA, China now hosts more than 60% of global electrolyser manufacturing capacity and accounts for 65% of global installed electrolysis capacity and projects that had reached FID.

Chinese manufacturers have long benefited from highly competitive equipment costs, booming domestic green hydrogen projects and an extensive industrial supply base. At the same time, the quality and performance of Chinese electrolysers and key materials are improving rapidly as deployment expands and manufacturers increase investment in engineering, testing and product development. The companies coming to Hamburg are therefore not simply competing on price. Many are presenting their most mature commercial products, including large-scale alkaline systems, PEM electrolysers, AEM-related materials, advanced catalysts, membranes, electrodes and porous transport components. Taken together, they provide a useful snapshot of the technical capabilities now emerging across China’s electrolyser supply chain.

To give you a few examples, SLG Hydrogen, or Shuangliang, one of the biggest alkaline electrolyser manufacturers in term of production capacity and market share in China, will exhibit at the show for two consecutive years. SLG Hydrogen has just delivered its new-generation alkaline system (4*1250Nm3/hr ALK electrolysers) to the Baofeng Energy’s landmark green hydrogen production project in Ordos, Inner Mongolia.

Chinese companies will also show the latest advancements of their PEM electrolysers and key components at the exhibition. Shanghai H-Ray S&T Co., Ltd (H-Ray), now offers a series of products including MEAs, 2-500 Nm³/h stack and 2-1000 Nm³/h systems dedicated to the applications in green energy, chemical industry, as well as semiconductor sector. Shanghai H-Rise New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (H-Rise), another innovative enterprise focuses on systematic solutions of hydrogen-electric conversion equipment, will showcase their high-efficiency PEM electrolysers and system. It should be noted that H-Rise has delivered a 5MW offshore PEM electrolyser system last year, the first-of-its-kind in China.

Catalysts, membranes, electrodes and other key materials and components are also among the major highlights of this year’s exhibition for Chinese exhibitors. Shandong Dongyue Future Hydrogen Energy Materials Co., Ltd. (Dongyue Future Hydrogen), is a first mover in China’s fluorinated functional membrane materials industry. Juna Tech, a leading green hydrogen electrode technologies innovator in China, will showcase its high-performance alkaline and AEM electrode. Shanghai Tangfeng Energy Technology Co., Ltd., (Tangfeng) will present catalysts products and low-iridium CCM/MEA solutions for PEM water electrolysis with customizable iridium loading and large active areas, to name a few.

Unlike Europe, where electrolyser and fuel-cell technologies have benefited from several decades of accumulated research and engineering experience, China’s hydrogen equipment industry is comparatively young. Most of the Chinese exhibitors, particularly those in the electrolyser supply chain, were established within the past 10 years. However, Chinese companies possess several advantages that their European peers do not have.

The first is highly integrated upstream and downstream collaboration. Benefiting from the rapid development of China’s manufacturing sector, especially the electromechanical sectors, the complete and well developed industrial collaboration networks have already established in regions such as the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. Companies can often find suppliers and engineering partners within a relatively limited geographical area, helping to reduce both development and production costs. An investigation shows that more than 90% of Chinese exhibitors are located in the three regions above, making the highly complex collaborations possible and less costly.

The second advantage is the scale and diversity of domestic electrolyser deployment. China has the world’s largest domestic market for electrolysis projects with widely diversified technology pathways. They include large-scale alkaline electrolyser systems as well as projects combining alkaline and PEM electrolysers. Mainstream commercial electrolyser products now cover a very wide capacity range, from around 200 Nm³/h to 5,000 Nm³/h. More advanced technologies are also emerging as real-world solutions. AEM electrolysers, for example, have already begun to enter commercial-scale deployment in China.

This large base of industrial level applications gives Chinese manufacturers valuable opportunities to validate performance under actual operating conditions, identify design weaknesses and develop next-generation products. As a result, even many medium-size Chinese companies now have considerable practical experience in designing and manufacturing electrolyser systems and critical components. In some respects, this is the most shining feature of Chinese exhibitors. Attractive specifications on paper matter, but long-term operating data from real projects ultimately provide the more decisive validations.

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