Bramble Energy expands into new Crawley HQ

Fuel-cell specialist Bramble Energy has opened its new headquarters in Crawley, an over 34,000 square feet facility divided equally between labs and office space.

Bramble Energy

Founded in 2016, the move to West Sussex has been made accommodate Bramble Energy's projected expansion and support the scale up of its technology.

Dr Tom Mason, Bramble Energy’s co-founder and CEO said that activities at the site will revolve around ‘design, develop, test’ and includes a Hydrogen Innovation Hub, a research facility dedicated to hydrogen fuel cells, electrolysers and sensors.

According to Bramble Energy, concepts can be taken through from the R&D phase all the way up to production-ready technology, as well as test fuel cells producing single digit Watts up to multi kW sizes.

Founded as a university spin-out, then developed in the garage of Dr Mason, Bramble Energy has developed fuel cell solutions based on printed circuit board (PCB) technology, which removes the need for various complex and costly components found in an electrochemical stack. This simplifies the supply chain and does not require substantial retooling for manufacture.

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The patent-protected concept allows for the design, manufacture, test, and shipping of a PCB fuel cell in a matter of weeks and at a lower cost.

“We’ve utilised all of the supply chain, the methodologies, and this has taken us a decade to perfect it and grow it to be what Bramble is today,” said Dr Mason.

In May, 2023 the company was awarded £12m in funding from the Advanced Propulsion Centre to provide its fuel cell technology to HEIDI, a hydrogen bus project.

Dr Mason said: “We have got to the point now where all of the design specifications are approaching completion and the actual prototyping and development work starts with the aim that it’s running by the end of next year.”