Hydrasun is establishing electrolyser assembly and integration capacity in Aberdeen under a framework agreement with Norwegian hydrogen technology company Nel, adding a defined manufacturing operation to the North East Scotland energy supply chain.
Hydrasun will invest in production lines for Nel’s MC Series proton exchange membrane electrolysers and will procure, assemble, and integrate the balance-of-plant systems around the PEM stacks. The stacks themselves will continue to be manufactured at Nel’s Wallingford facility in the United States, leaving Aberdeen responsible for a substantial share of system integration rather than electrochemical stack production.
The agreement initially covers MC Series building blocks rated at 1.25 MW and 2.5 MW. Nel’s wider MC platform is factory-built and containerised, with larger configurations created from modular units, while the company specifies factory acceptance testing before shipment and fast load-following capability for variable power sources.
That division of work plays directly to Hydrasun’s existing engineering base. The Aberdeen company has spent five decades supplying fluid transfer, power, control, and integrated engineering systems, and those disciplines are also required around an electrolyser stack, where water treatment, cooling, gas handling, electrical equipment, instrumentation, controls, and safety systems have to operate as a complete package.
The project is supported by £1.97 million from the Scottish Government’s Just Transition Fund for the North East and Moray. The 2026 funding round lists Hydrasun’s electrolyser manufacturing capability as a 2026–2029 project, while the company expects the investment to create up to 12 jobs and safeguard a further 11 at its Aberdeen operation.
James Gaskell, chief executive of Hydrasun, described establishing Scotland’s first electrolyser assembly and integration facility as “a proud milestone for the company”. The announcement coincides with Hydrasun’s 50th year in business, having been founded in Aberdeen in 1976.
Factory integration can remove some of the work that would otherwise be carried out after equipment reaches a hydrogen project site. Standardised skids, pipework, controls, electrical interfaces, and supporting systems can be assembled and tested under repeatable conditions before shipment, although project-specific engineering remains necessary around utilities, site layout, storage, compression, and hydrogen use.
PEM electrolysers are particularly suited to applications where electrical input changes quickly. Nel states that its MC500 system can ramp at up to 10% per second and cold-start in under eight minutes, characteristics intended to support operation alongside variable power sources. The commercial case still depends on electricity cost, equipment utilisation, hydrogen demand, and the infrastructure required downstream of the electrolyser.
For Aberdeen, the manufacturing boundary is worth defining carefully. The project does not transfer PEM stack production from the US to Scotland; it establishes assembly and integration capability for complete systems using those imported stacks. That is a narrower step than establishing a vertically integrated electrolyser factory, but it still creates local work in fabrication, valves, instrumentation, controls, testing, and system engineering.
The model also reduces the need for Nel to duplicate every part of its integration operation in Europe. Hydrasun becomes a regional partner able to configure and assemble supporting equipment while Nel retains responsibility for the core PEM technology, giving customers another delivery route as European projects progress.
Public funding around the North East transition has often been judged against whether it produces durable industrial activity rather than another round of development studies. Hydrasun’s project has a physical output: production lines, integrated electrolyser systems, and a stated employment commitment tied to an existing Aberdeen engineering business.
The arrangement may also widen the addressable work for companies already supplying Aberdeen’s conventional energy sector. Electrolyser packages need pressure equipment, tubing, valves, electrical distribution, sensors, control hardware, fabrication, and test services, many of which sit close to capabilities developed around offshore oil and gas. Whether that translates into local orders will depend on Hydrasun’s sourcing decisions and the volume of systems it secures.
Nel’s modular design is intended to make capacity additions more repeatable than individually engineered plants. Standardisation can shorten engineering cycles and simplify spares, training, and factory testing, but it does not remove the need to match each installation to power quality, water supply, compression, storage, and the end user’s hydrogen specification.
Its value will become clearer once those lines are commissioned and customer orders begin moving through them. The measure is not the number of hydrogen announcements attached to Aberdeen, but the volume of equipment assembled, tested, shipped, and supported from the region over the 2026–2029 funding period.
