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Doosan Strategic Collaboration

Oct 19, 2020

Operator

Hello, and welcome to the Ceres Power Doosan agreement. Should you wish to retrieve a presentation of the call, you may download it from the investor section in the Ceres website. My name is Val, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note, this conference is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only.

However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question at any time. If at any point you require assistance, please press star zero and you'll be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Phil Caldwell, CEO of Ceres Power, to begin today's conference. Thank you.

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Good morning everybody, and thank you for joining this call today. I'm very excited to talk about the latest strategic agreement that we've signed this morning between Ceres Power and Doosan. I'll be referring to the presentation material as mentioned, which is on the presentation section of the investor relations part of our website. I'm just going to step through this to explain to you the details of this collaboration.

Moving to slide two, the strategic rationale. This is an incredibly strategic deal for Ceres because Doosan Fuel Cell is the world's leader in stationary power fuel cells. Today, we've signed an agreement that gives them a non-exclusive license to manufacture the Ceres SteelCell technology in South Korea. What's exciting about this deal is it's our second major manufacturing licensee after Bosch, but it's actually going to 50 MW capacity by 2024.

Quite a significant ramp up in scale for this technology. What's also very strategic for us, and I think I've indicated this to you before, is we strategically want to go into higher power systems. The South Korean market has a very attractive market for fuel cells, which I will explain in a few moments, at a utility scale, and this is exactly in line with our plan. Again, more scale leads to future license and royalty revenues.

Doosan has already established as a leading player in the South Korean market, with over 377 MW installed to date, and has just announced the world's largest 50 MW hydrogen power plant. It's definitely the world leader in this technology. Moving on to slide three.

The total value of the deal for Ceres is up to GBP 43 million, with license fees from technology transfer, joint development revenues of GBP 36 million over the next three years, plus an additional GBP 7 million contingent on meeting certain KPIs. As usual, the agreement also includes the license terms for royalty streams, which will follow the production launch and the commercial sale of the 5 kW SteelCell stacks into future products of Doosan.

This builds upon the initial two-year collaboration and license agreement we signed just over a year ago with Doosan, which was to develop a 5 kW- 20 kW power system. That was an initial GBP 8 million deal. This is an additional GBP 43 million new deal today. If you move to slide four, just to illustrate how these collaboration agreements come together.

We're more or less halfway through the first collaboration on the 5 kW-20 kW system level license for a CHP unit. Today, we're adding two key agreements to this. One is to actually take our technology and scale it into higher power systems for utility scale applications, and also the license to manufacture the SteelCell technology in South Korea with an initial 50 MW of capacity.

Once those deals come to product launch in 2024, we expect to receive royalties from systems sold from CHP units and also royalties from stacks manufactured, and our royalties are based on a per kilowatt basis. If you go to slide five, many of you that follow the company will have seen this slide before. What we've indicated before is the revenue evolution of the company.

You've seen in recent years, we have had significant revenue growth based on both engineering services and also on license revenues coming through. This latest deal over three years takes us again into that near-term growth phase, but also has a first commitment to full market launch in 2024, which then gives us line of sight to those future royalties.

It's very significant because it's adding more scale at higher power and also the commitment for scale of mass production of our technology. Moving on to slide six, just a few words about Doosan. I have mentioned Doosan is the world leader in stationary fuel cell power. It's recently spun out its fuel cell division and listed this on the Korean market, it has a current market cap of around GBP 1.85 billion.

It has 70% market share of the South Korean market, and it's built this based on existing technology that it's acquired several years ago from United Technologies in the U.S. That's based on a phosphoric acid technology which you can see there, the PureCell, which is about 43% electrical efficiency.

What it strategically is doing with this agreement is adding solid oxide to its portfolio to increase electrical efficiency to 60%. Quite a significant uplift in efficiency. Doosan is very ambitious. It's planning to achieve revenue growth from GBP 283 million today or KRW 450 billion, targeting KRW 1.5 trillion, just under GBP 1 billion of revenue by 2023. You can see in the pictures on the right, the PureCell system it has today, and also the world's first 50 MW power plant that it's just inaugurated in South Korea.

If we talk a little bit about why the South Korean market is so key for us. Probably, it's got the most progressive regulation incentives anywhere to encourage the deployment of hydrogen and fuel cell technology, and it's targeting 16 GW deployment by 2040. As I mentioned, the 375 MW of installed plants already in South Korea account for 35% of global installed fuel cell capacity.

Like many regions and countries that we're seeing post-COVID, it's committed to a new Green New Deal, which is GBP 46 billion of investment by 2025. That's part of a national strategy to transform Korean economy from being carbon dependent, support industry and jobs, and tackle climate change. It's also progressive in its future vision for hydrogen and has an initiative to convert three cities to become hydrogen powered. If we go on to slide eight.

What's fueling this growth is some of the policies that they have in place. The Renewable Portfolio Standard means that utilities must source at least 7% of total power production from new or renewable sources. That figure rises by 1% each year from 2020 up to 10% in 2023.

Now, fuel cell installations count as double towards these targets. Hence you're seeing this introduction of fuel cell power for utility scale. They have a Hydrogen Economy Roadmap with the new Green New Deal, transitioning Korea to a hydrogen reliant economy by 2040. The hydrogen market in Korea is set to double to KRW 27 trillion or GBP 17 billion by 2030. That's through a combination of targets around fuel cell power plants rising 15 GW, residential fuel cells rising to 2 GW, and a plan for something like 79,000 fuel cell vehicles by 2022.

Very progressive, very ambitious policy for adoption of fuel cells. Moving on to slide nine. Why it's exciting for Ceres is it's carrying out the strategy that we've laid out for the business. There's two prongs to this. One is we are aiming to have a number of partners as world-class, global scale manufacturers of our technology.

The Korean market being such a strategic region for us, it makes sense that we go with the market leader, and that's Doosan. We're very pleased to announce that they will scale manufacturing of our technology in South Korea. The second thing is, if you look at the right-hand side, our technology has several different applications.

Today, with this step forward, we're looking to support Doosan to introduce this into higher power applications, which will have benefits for increased power for distributed power generation, and also be able to apply to the utility-scale generation market. Very significant capacity and production, which again leads to very significant future royalties for sales.

In summary, on slide 10, this is a very strategic deal for Ceres today, worth up to GBP 43 million over the next three years. It's a key manufacturing partner in the world's largest market for fuel cells. As I've mentioned, Doosan plans to build a facility which should come on stream with 50 MW by 2024, with support from Ceres on the technology transfer. Ceres and Doosan will work together to develop power systems to target larger utility-scale applications.

Royalties and revenue streams are then anticipated to come on stream for us post manufacturing launch in 2024. With that, I'll take any questions that you may have.

Operator

As a reminder if you would like to ask a question or make any contribution to todays call please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question please press star two. Again it is star one on your keypad. We do have a few questions in the queue. The first question comes from the line of Lacie Midgley from Panmure Gordon. Please go ahead.

Lacie Midgley
Analyst, Panmure Gordon

Morning, Phil. Can you hear me okay?

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Yes, I can. Go ahead, Lacie.

Lacie Midgley
Analyst, Panmure Gordon

Hi. Congratulations on the announcement this morning. That's great news. I just think, first one for me is, was this sort of a natural partnership development following the initial CHP agreement you had with Doosan? Yeah, I'm just trying to get my head around, because obviously there's a bit in here with Doosan Corp and Doosan Fuel Cell. I'm just trying to understand if that follows on from that initial agreement or if that was quite separate from that, if that makes sense.

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Sure.

Lacie Midgley
Analyst, Panmure Gordon

how the different moving parts are working.

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

No, I think it's a good question. Most of the strategic relationships take several years to develop, and we started with Doosan probably three years or so ago now, as a usual first step of technology evaluation. We went into joint development of the first product, which was the 5 kW- 20 kW CHP we announced last year.

However, if you think about solid oxide as a technology and you think about their portfolio, so Doosan already have PAFC technology for lower scale applications, and then they've got phosphoric acid for higher power. Solid oxide as a technology can go into all of these markets, all of these stationary power markets. I think what's happened is, right from the beginning, we always anticipated that if things went well, we would expand this relationship with Doosan.

I think the CHP contract was the first step, but we always felt that the big opportunity was to broaden into higher power and mass manufacture in South Korea. That's where we've got to today. I think if you think about the product portfolio, I think it can go into several other applications as well in the future, b ecause if you have solid oxide, you have the highest efficiency of all of the technologies for power generation. I think that's why it's strategically important for Doosan.

Lacie Midgley
Analyst, Panmure Gordon

Yeah, definitely. Okay. Thank you. That's really helpful. just secondly, would just be sort of on the phasing of those GBP 43 million. I don't know if you can give any color on that over those three years?

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

They're kind of running in parallel. There's quite an intense period now where we do technology transfer. What does technology transfer entail? That's where basically we will get together with Doosan, run sessions where we actually teach them how to make our technology, help them support the supply chain and actually bringing up manufacturing.

There's an intense wave of technology transfer, and then there's a long support period. On the development of higher power systems, that's something that Doosan will take the lead in and we will play a supporting role in. The revenue streams will flow over the next few years, but we'll give more details on that, I think, in future forecasts.

Lacie Midgley
Analyst, Panmure Gordon

Yeah. Understood. No, that's helpful. That's good. Thanks, Phil. That's all from me. Thank you.

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Adam Collins from Liberum. Please go ahead.

Adam Collins
Analyst, Liberum

Good morning, Phil. Can you hear me okay?

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Yes, Adam. Good morning.

Adam Collins
Analyst, Liberum

Good morning. Three quick ones from me. What are the largest power systems you think that SteelCell could be targeted at by Doosan? Are they interested in hydrogen SteelCell? What do you think the main non-Korean markets they're interested in is?

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Sorry, Adam. Can you repeat the last question?

Adam Collins
Analyst, Liberum

Yeah. Where do you think the main interest from Doosan is internationally? I see there's a blob in your geographic chart, which looks like North America. Is that one of their international aspirations? Where outside of Korea beyond that do you think that they might be targeting these things?

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Sure. Okay. In terms of the size of the units, This technology is very modular, and if you look at the modules that they deploy today, they're in the range of 200 kW-400 kW type modules. I anticipate something similar, in terms of power, in the hundreds of kilowatts. That's obviously to be determined between the two companies.

In terms of Doosan's ambitions, obviously the Korean market is a large market, but Korea as a country has pretty ambitious targets to actually become the world's leading exporter of fuel cells as well, just as they have with battery technology. In terms of Doosan's presence, obviously they have Doosan Fuel Cell America, so they already have a pretty strong footprint in the U.S. as well.

I think when we announce these deals, people shouldn't think of Doosan as a pure Korean player in the same way they shouldn't think of Bosch as a pure European player. These are global companies with and this is a global market that's emerging. I think for Doosan, it's obviously the world leader and the number one in South Korea obviously with the footprint in the U.S., I think that's obviously a key market in the future. What was your second question, Adam?

Adam Collins
Analyst, Liberum

Hydrogen.

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Oh, yeah.

Adam Collins
Analyst, Liberum

How interested are they in running this on hydrogen?

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Well, I think the answer to that is they are interested in hydrogen. You've seen in the presentation, they've just built the world's largest 50 MW power plant running on byproduct hydrogen from an industrial process. Hydrogen, I think, is a key part of South Korea's roadmap in the future.

Technologies like solid oxide, which are fuel flexible and can be one of these key transition technologies that can run on natural gas and run on hydrogen, and the transition blends in between, I think is a very important feature for them as well. I do think Korea will be one of the first countries to move towards hydrogen, and therefore future-proofing of technologies is important.

Adam Collins
Analyst, Liberum

Yeah. Okay. Thanks a lot. Congrats again.

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Anthony Plom from Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Anthony Plom
Analyst, BERENBERG

Yeah, morning, Phil.

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Morning.

Anthony Plom
Analyst, BERENBERG

Most of my question has been answered. I suppose maybe just a very simple one to start with. Would you mind maybe just discussing a bit more detail sort of what we actually mean by utility scale applications? In terms of the size, obviously looking at multiple hundred kilowatts.

What is the fuel cell displacing here? What's the biggest barriers to adoption? Who are the likely customers? I'm just saying sort of cover on that would be useful. Just on the KPIs, I suppose one of these based on, maybe you can't give it explicitly, but what sort of things we're looking out for. Thanks.

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Sure. I think when we talk about utility scale, as I mentioned in the presentation, that requirement on utilities to source increasing amounts of new and renewable power up to 10% by 2023, has created a growth market for fuel cells in those kind of applications.

If you look at how they're being deployed today with the current technology, you've got hundreds of kilowatt modules being applied into megawatts and tens of megawatt scale when you look at that 50 MW power plant. I think it doesn't mean that you have to build megawatt scale fuel cells. You can build modular multi-hundred kilowatt systems and then just add them together to make megawatt scale. That's what we mean by utility scale.

Anthony Plom
Analyst, BERENBERG

Okay.

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

In terms of the KPIs, I think there's a balance of several KPIs which are all around sharing some of the targets that we have for the cost of the fuel cells produced, the quality, and those kind of pretty standard commercial metrics. I can't divulge all of the details, but-

what it's around is, Ceres, once we've transferred this technology, making sure that what we say the potential is for what that production facility can do and what the technology can do is delivered to Doosan.

Anthony Plom
Analyst, BERENBERG

Cool. Thanks very much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Marc Elliott from Investec. Please go ahead.

Marc Elliott
Analyst, Investec

Morning, Phil.

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Morning.

Marc Elliott
Analyst, Investec

I was curious to know your thoughts. You now have two stack level agreements, Bosch and Doosan. Just thought you could share with us some color on how you see that sort of level of agreement with those two partners opening up additional system-level partners, let's say in there, I know you said they're both global, but let's say, you got Doosan opening up the Asian market, Bosch, okay, global, but let's say European and North American.

Opening up new markets at the system level through their sales channels and thoughts. Is this about the right kind of number of partners with whom you'd want stack-level agreements, or would you be looking to add one or two more in the next sort of couple of years or so?

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

I think if you look at the scale of the market opportunity and where those markets are, it's always been our strategy to have several manufacturing licensees at the stack level. we would look at additional manufacturing licensees in the future. In terms of the additional commercial opportunities that this may bring, I think what it does do is, if you think about our model, we have system-level licensees, for example, like Miura.

Then now we have manufacturing licensees like Bosch and like Doosan. What it creates, this ecosystem is on one hand, we're creating more and more call for the technology from system-level partners and licensees. now we also are fulfilling that demand through potential supply through the likes of Bosch and Doosan, to fulfill demand elsewhere as well.

I think what it does is it gives increasing confidence to people who maybe want to use this technology, but maybe don't have the capability or the ambition to take on manufacturing themselves, that there will be a global manufacturing supply of this technology in the future. I've used the analogy before of the chip industry with Arm. It's a similar approach.

We're creating an ecosystem of demand for the technology and then looking to have a number of trusted partners at the manufacturing level, but with a global presence that can fulfill that demand. I think, obviously, strategically in the future, there may be key regions of the world where it makes sense to localize manufacturing with the right partners. for us, it's all about having global scale for our manufacturing.

Marc Elliott
Analyst, Investec

Great. Thanks, Phil.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Edward Maravanyika from Citi. Please go ahead.

Edward Maravanyika
Analyst, Citi

Good morning, Phil. Just had a quick question. That royalty number will be upfront, and can you maybe discuss how it compares to maybe other royalty agreements you've discussed before?

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Sorry, can you just repeat that question, please? It broke up for a second.

Edward Maravanyika
Analyst, Citi

Yeah, sure. It was just around the royalties.

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Yes.

Edward Maravanyika
Analyst, Citi

Just to confirm if you have already predetermined the number upfront, and whether it's a flat royalty number or whether there's some kind of a scaling or whatever you can sort of expand on that?

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Sure. Yes, the royalties are already agreed in these contracts, similar to most of our agreements. The levels of royalty, while we can't divulge the exact nature, they're pretty consistent with our other licensee partners. The royalty rates are probably in line with what we've described before.

Edward Maravanyika
Analyst, Citi

Okay.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Sanjay Jha from Panmure Gordon. Please go ahead.

Sanjay Jha
Analyst, Panmure Gordon

Hello, how are you? Good morning. Thank you, Phil. Most of my questions have been answered. I was just trying to get my head around Doosan's strategy because I noticed that Bloom Energy did a deal to sell units into South Korean market via SK Group, and I was wondering are you still able to do deals with other South Korean companies after this deal?

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Well, it's a non-exclusive deal. I think our focus is obviously with Doosan because we think that Doosan are the market leaders and probably the most important partner for us in this region. You're right, I think the SK collaboration with Bloom actually creates some healthy competition now.

You've now got two major corporations in South Korea moving towards solid oxide. I think that's very good for solid oxide as a technology in general. A lot of analysts are very familiar with PEM, and people talk a lot about PEM in the transportation sector. Sometimes I feel that the stationary power market is somewhat overlooked. Now what you're seeing is large scale deployments of solid oxide, particularly through Doosan and now with SK and Bloom. I think it's healthy competition in this kind of region.

There are other applications, of course, that our technology is applicable to, and like I said, this is a non-exclusive agreement with Doosan, so it doesn't limit us from obviously creating more partnerships in the South Korean market in the future. Today, we're very happy with Doosan and with 70% market share in that particular market, we think there's no better partner.

Sanjay Jha
Analyst, Panmure Gordon

I'm guessing that your strategy is different from Bloom, because Bloom is making the units. You presumably will just supply the stacks or whatever to Doosan.

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Yeah. It's a different strategy from Bloom because we're actually licensing Doosan to manufacture the stacks in South Korea. That's quite important, I think, particularly for the South Korean government, because I think they want to see as much localized manufacture as possible. Our business model of licensing is very attractive to Doosan.

Sanjay Jha
Analyst, Panmure Gordon

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Anne Margaret Crow from Edison. Please go ahead.

Anne Crow
Analyst, Edison Group

Good morning. Congratulations, and thank you very much for taking my call. I've got a couple of questions, but they are kind of more regarding Doosan's strategy, so I appreciate it if it's not something that you feel fully able to comment on.

One of them, the first was whether Doosan would be phasing out their phosphoric acid technology in favor of solid oxide. The second was whether Doosan are actively putting technology in place to ensure availability of hydrogen derived from renewable sources going forward.

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

I really can't comment on Doosan's strategy for its phosphoric acid business. I think if you look at their own investor relations reports, I think they say a lot more about their strategy. I think, obviously, solid oxide offers them something in addition to what they have in the phosphoric acid technology.

As we've just discussed, there is now competition also in South Korea with solid oxide technology coming to market. I think it's a natural progression that a company like Doosan would move forwards with technology towards solid oxide. I can't speak to their particular strategy. In terms of your second question around hydrogen, I think the question you're asking, Anne, is are they interested in green hydrogen from renewables?

I think the answer to that is obviously yes t hey are. Interestingly, the first hydrogen power plant that they've installed is actually using byproduct hydrogen from an industrial process.

That's also quite interesting because solid oxide is able to deal with a lot of impurities in fuels, particularly if they're coming from industrial processes. We're a lot more tolerant to, let's call it non-green hydrogen or hydrogen that's been cleaned up from an industrial process than other technologies are, say, PEM. We're very confident in the application of solid oxide, whether it's from green hydrogen or from gray or blue hydrogen, it doesn't really matter. I think that flexibility is also important to our customers like Doosan.

Anne Crow
Analyst, Edison Group

Great. No, that's very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Adam Forsyth from Longspur Research. Please go ahead.

Adam Forsyth
Analyst, Longspur Capital

Morning, Phil. Just a couple of questions. Firstly, on technology transfer, do you see any pinch points there? I'm sure you've had a thorough review of the risks. I wonder, what are the sort of things that might just slow up the process around tech transfer? Is there any technology you're not transferring? Are they getting everything or are you keeping anything back from a sort of IP perspective?

Then finally, just again on the sort of use cases that Doosan will be deploying the applications. Are you expecting most of these to be essentially base load applications, or will you be able to sort of provide some element of flexibility within the final product, as it were?

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

I think they're using them in a variety of applications, including prime power. These aren't backup systems. These are prime power systems. I think if you look at their product portfolio, you've got these high power level deployments at a utility scale, and then you've got things like the CHP modules. Don't forget we're developing that product line with Doosan as well.

That will address a different sector slightly, which would be like commercial buildings, office blocks, et cetera. They're also present in the microgeneration end of the market as well, currently with PEM. I think they see this technology as a platform technology that can be applied into many different applications.

Obviously the larger markets today are at the prime power generation end of the market. In terms of IP transfer, we don't really foresee any bottlenecks in that. We're getting pretty good at doing technology transfer, having done this several times already. Obviously, there's some slight limitations with the current situation with COVID, but we're very confident. We've already built the team up in anticipation of this deal over the past few months. We're ready to go with the resources to do it.

If you look at the timeline from where we are today to 50 MW, it's quite an aggressive timeline, quite ambitious. We want to hit the ground running with Doosan, and everybody's ready to go on this. In terms of the nature of the license, it is a license that will give Doosan the full technology that they need to be able to manufacture cells and stacks in South Korea.

We are not withholding anything at this point that they need in order to actually enable that manufacturing to happen. On the system level, it really depends on what IP is relevant to their system and utilizing our technology versus intellectual property that they already have or capability they already have.

I think that's what's good about Doosan as a partner is obviously there's a heritage there within Doosan Fuel Cell and Doosan Fuel Cell America as well, on doing large scale systems already. They bring a lot of know-how to the table already. The IP transfers depends on what our customers really need, but it's going to be a very collaborative approach.

Adam Forsyth
Analyst, Longspur Capital

Great. Thanks. Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Nick Walker from Arden Partners. Please go ahead.

Nick Walker
Analyst, Arden Partners

Morning, Phil. Couple of questions, please. First of all, with respect, obviously, this license is for technology transfer and manufacturing of cells and stacks to Doosan. In every case, will Doosan be integrating cells and stacks into their own whole products and those products be deployed in the market or might Doosan, in certain circumstances, partner with other integrators, other product makers with your cells and stacks, where other partners might then make the end user products?

That's the first question. The second question is, with respect to Doosan's sales channels and sales partners, do you have any sort of feel for whether they sell directly in every case to utility companies, commercial building companies, et cetera, or do they work through distributors and other service partners to deploy the end user products? Thanks.

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Sure. If I answer your second question first. I honestly don't know how that is managed today and what the split is. I think there's probably quite a lot of information in the public domain from Doosan Fuel Cell around their strategy since they listed earlier this year or last year.

I think you would have to refer to Doosan for more information on that. In terms of the potential for them to supply to third parties, I think we've said this in the RNS, the first focus is to meet their internal demand for their own products. However, they do anticipate supplying stacks to third parties as well in the future. I think they definitely have the ambition to manufacture beyond their own product portfolio.

Nick Walker
Analyst, Arden Partners

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of [inaudible] from Marshall Wace. Please go ahead.

Speaker 12

Hi. Good morning, everyone. I have two questions, I guess, related to slides seven and eight, particularly in terms of the environmental benefit of fuel cells. I guess I'm just trying to understand two things. One is in Korea, the fact that they're incentivizing fuel cells as part of renewables, is that including using methane?

I'm just wondering if there's any environmental benefit. Secondly, if there isn't an environmental benefit of using a fuel cell for methane versus a gas turbine, do you think that the Koreans are trying to promote the fuel cell technology and that eventually we'll transition to hydrogen?

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Yeah. I think it applies today for fuel cells running with methane, and it's all about also the transition to the future. I think fuel cell is the most efficient way to generate power from fuel. If you are going to use a natural resource, like natural gas as your fuel, then you want it to be as efficient as possible because that has the benefit of being lowest carbon way of producing power from that fuel.

I think when you get up into the types of efficiencies you're talking about with solid oxide, you're talking about reductions in carbon compared with grid scale power of around 30% lower carbon. I think those numbers are well understood if you look at any of the studies that have been done around deployment of fuel cells in Europe based on natural gas. That's the first thing.

The second thing is, I think South Korea are more progressive than most in understanding the relationship between fuel cells and hydrogen. There's a lot of excitement and talk about hydrogen as a fuel, there's less focus on the deployment scales and the demand side of hydrogen.

Very often, people's awareness is limited to transportation. I think by using highly efficient distributed power that can run on the fuels that we have today, like natural gas, and can run on future fuels like hydrogen is the right strategy because we need to be able to transition, and natural gas is seen as a key fuel for that transition. You can't suddenly get a wholesale switch overnight from the energy system we have to a hydrogen future. You can look at Doosan's strategy.

They're operating plants on natural gas today, and they've just put in this 50 MW facility running on hydrogen. You can see the direction of travel. Essentially, it's with the same technology. That's a big part of the strategy is getting established with the most efficient technology today that can transition towards that hydrogen future. I think the Korean incentives are doing two things.

One is they are decarbonizing their society from today and they're future-proofing it towards hydrogen. I think the second part of the Korean government's strategy is they recognize that fuel cells are going to be as important as battery technology is globally, and they want to be a world exporter of that technology. If you think about where lithium-ion was a few years ago, and now the mass scale production is dominated by Korean, Chinese, and Japanese manufacturers.

I think by early adoption of this technology and by encouraging this industry, they realize that they will become world leaders in the export of this technology in the future.

Speaker 12

Understood. Thank you. Very clear.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions in the queue. I'll hand the call back to our speaker to conclude today's conference. Thank you.

Phil Caldwell
CEO, Ceres Power Holding

Great. Well, thank you everybody for taking the time today. As usual, very good questions which help to bring the detail of the deal to life. Just to summarize, we're incredibly excited about this new deal with Doosan. It's an incredibly valuable deal for us with GBP 43 million over the next three years.

It does establish a manufacturing partner in the world's largest market for fuel cells for stationary power today. It's a commitment to move to 50 MW scale, which is a significant ramp up in capacity for the Ceres technology. It takes us into these higher power applications and new markets for the Ceres technology. It underpins the future value of the company through royalty streams from future production. We're really looking forward to working with Doosan, and we're very pleased to announce this milestone today.

Thank you everybody for your time, and we'll keep you updated with progress in the future. Thank you.

Operator

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