Plug Power Brand Guidelines: The New York Fuel Cell Maker Behind GenDrive Forklift Power

A utility, an engineering firm and a fuel cell.

Plug Power was founded in 1997 as a joint venture between the utility group DTE Energy and Mechanical Technology Inc., according to English Wikipedia. A November 2021 press release from the office of New York’s governor says it was founded in Albany County. Sources differ slightly on the exact headquarters town: Wikipedia’s summary box gives Latham, New York, as does a 2023 report syndicated from TheStreet, while the body of the Wikipedia article names nearby Slingerlands.

The company went public in October 1999 and trades on Nasdaq. Its early years as a listed company included a shareholder class action over statements made around the share offering, which a federal court in New York consolidated in 2000 and which was settled in December 2004, Wikipedia says.

Andy Marsh led the company from 2008, according to the trade site Hydrogen Industry Leaders. In October 2025 Plug named its chief revenue officer, Jose Luis Crespo, as president, with the plan that he would become chief executive in March 2026 while Marsh moved to executive chair of the board; Mining Connection reported the appointments in December 2025, noting that Crespo had joined Plug in 2014. English Wikipedia now lists Crespo as chief executive and Marsh as chairman.

The company’s own line for itself is short: its website says “Plug is hydrogen,” and describes a business that designs, builds and operates the equipment to produce, move, store and use the gas.

Forklifts first, then electrolysers and plants.

Plug’s website puts warehouse and fleet operations first among its markets. Its GenDrive units are fuel cell power packs for forklifts and other electric lift trucks, designed to fit the space meant for a lead-acid battery and to be refuelled with hydrogen in minutes rather than recharged for hours, Wikipedia says; it adds that GenDrive systems use fuel cells made both by Plug and by Ballard Power Systems. The company’s website lists GenDrive Series 1000, 2000 and 3000 for different classes of truck. In 2023 TheStreet described Plug as supplying fuel cells for industrial vehicles used by Amazon and Walmart, and in 2017 the company announced that the US Postal Service had adopted GenDrive for a forklift fleet in Capitol Heights, Maryland, Wikipedia records.

The product range then widened. Wikipedia says Plug began shipping production ProGen fuel cell engines for electric delivery vehicles in February 2017 and introduced larger ProGen engines for heavy trucks and off-road equipment in 2020. Its GenEco PEM electrolysers make hydrogen from water and electricity; the company says they come as standard 5-megawatt and 10-megawatt systems that can be combined for larger projects, and that more than 300 megawatts of GenEco capacity has been shipped worldwide. In October 2025, Wikipedia says, Plug delivered the first of ten 10-megawatt GenEco units for a 100-megawatt project at Galp’s Sines refinery in Portugal.

Plug also produces hydrogen itself. Wikipedia says a plant at Woodbine, Georgia, completed in January 2024, uses eight 5-megawatt PEM electrolysers and is designed to make 15 tonnes of liquid hydrogen a day, delivered to customers in cryogenic trailers. The company’s website describes a second liquefaction plant in Louisiana run with the chemicals group Olin.

How hydrogen companies present themselves.

Hydrogen and fuel cell companies sell equipment that most people never see in use. An electrolyser splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity; a fuel cell runs the reaction the other way, turning hydrogen into electricity. In the PEM designs made by several firms in this guide, the work happens in stacks of thin membranes and plates, assembled into larger systems that are often delivered in standard shipping containers, painted white or pale grey and lined up in rows at an industrial site.

That makes the sector’s public image a matter of pictures and words more than products. Company websites lean on photographs of factory floors, stacks being assembled, container rows beside wind turbines or refineries, and the vehicles that use the gas: hydrogen buses, delivery vans and, in the warehouse market, fuel-cell forklifts. Products tend to carry short, technical names, and greens and blues, suggesting water, air and renewable power, are a common choice.

The firms differ in what they actually make. Some build electrolysers to produce hydrogen; others build fuel cells to use it; and Plug Power says it covers production, storage, transport and use in one business. Several are listed companies, so their history is told as much in stock-exchange announcements, fundraisings and restructurings as in product launches, and a company’s own claims about capacity or cost should be read as claims.

The industry meets at trade fairs such as Hannover Messe in Germany and the Hydrogen Technology Expo, where stand design, demonstration stacks and project announcements do much of the brand work. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — who founded it, who owns it, where it makes its equipment — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A New York manufacturer with a volatile record.

Plug’s manufacturing is centred in New York State. In November 2021 the governor’s office announced the opening of the company’s Hydrogen Fuel Cell Innovation Center on John Street in Monroe County, near Rochester, which it called the world’s first gigafactory for PEM technology, making fuel cell stacks and electrolysers; the stacks go into ProGen engines, and the release said Plug planned up to 377 new jobs at the site. The same release says Plug had set up a membrane electrode assembly plant at Rochester’s Eastman Business Park in 2019, and had broken ground on a green hydrogen plant at the STAMP industrial park in Genesee County.

The company has drawn large outside investors. In January 2021 the South Korean conglomerate SK Group took a stake of about ten per cent and agreed a joint venture to supply hydrogen fuel cell products in Asia, and Plug signed a memorandum with Renault for a joint venture in France, according to Wikipedia.

Its finances have also drawn scrutiny. In March 2021 Plug said it could not file its 2020 annual report on time and then announced that it would restate its financial statements for 2018 and 2019, Wikipedia says, citing MarketWatch; a shareholder class action followed. In November 2023, TheStreet reported, Plug’s shares fell sharply after a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said its cash position and planned spending raised “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a going concern. When the leadership change was announced in 2025, Hydrogen Industry Leaders reported that Plug had recently completed a cost-reduction programme, and Marsh said the succession had been planned for years.

For a design guide, Plug Power shows a brand built around a single working use, the hydrogen forklift, then stretched to cover electrolysers and fuel supply. Compare Ballard Power, whose fuel cells appear in GenDrive units, and ITM Power, a British PEM electrolyser maker. For this guide we use a deep blue, a cell green and a warehouse grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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