German hydrogen electrolyzer factory starts production with a Chinese partner holding 49%
A German hydrogen electrolyzer factory in Saarbrucken started production on April 29, 2026. RCT Hydrogen, the joint venture running it, makes alkaline electrolyzers there, machines that split water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity. The headquarters of RCT Hydrogen is in Konstanz, more than 400 kilometers away, and the Saarbrucken factory belongs to its manufacturing partner, Bruck GmbH, a maker of forged and ring rolled steel products. The venture is 51% owned by RCT Holding, a German company, and 49% owned by the German arm of Jiangsu Guofu Hydrogen Energy Technology and Equipment Co Ltd, a Chinese hydrogen equipment maker. That ownership split puts a Chinese design inside a German factory, a detail that matters for anyone tracking how much of the clean hydrogen equipment supply chain in Europe now runs through Chinese technology.
In its own announcement of the launch, RCT Hydrogen describes its business model as Hydrogen as a Service. Under that model the company builds and runs the electrolyzer equipment itself, at the customer site, and the customer buys the hydrogen the equipment makes rather than buying the machine outright. Prof. Dr. Peter Fath, founder of RCT Group, said in that announcement.
We can see that companies need concrete solutions to address the bottlenecks of availability and cost.
Prof. Dr. Peter Fath, founder of RCT Group. Source 1.
The additional systems figure is stated only as more than 30 megawatts, so it is drawn as a floor, the true figure could be higher.
Show the numbers
| Demonstration plant | 2.5 |
| First customer order | 5 |
| Additional systems in planning | 30 |
Only a small share of the planned capacity is under contract
The Saarbrucken line is being built toward 250 megawatts of annual electrolyzer production capacity. So far a much smaller amount is actually committed. A 2.5 megawatt demonstration plant at the site is meant to replace the natural gas that Bruck GmbH, the manufacturing partner, currently burns in its own high temperature forging process. The first customer order, a 5 megawatt system, began assembly in June 2026 as the plan stood in April and May 2026, though nothing dated after May 2026 confirms it actually started on schedule. RCT Hydrogen says more than 30 megawatts of additional systems are already in planning beyond that order. Adding those 3 figures together, a MAOWCE calculation, puts about 15% of the eventual annual capacity of the factory under contract so far, and that share could be slightly higher since the 30 megawatt planning figure is stated only as a floor, not an exact count.
37.5 megawatts is a MAOWCE calculation, the sum of the 3 stages in the chart above, sourced to 1, 3 and 4. No source states this total figure directly. The additional systems figure it is built from is stated only as more than 30 megawatts, so 37.5, and the 15% share of the target it implies, is a floor, not an exact figure.
Show the numbers
| Committed, so far | 37.5 |
| Full annual, target | 250 |
Hydrogen still costs more than natural gas
RCT Hydrogen targets a production cost under 5.00 euros a kilogram for the hydrogen its systems make. pv magazine reports that hydrogen still costs 20 to 50% more than natural gas for the same amount of energy, a gap partly narrowed by the carbon price in Germany, 83 euros a tonne of carbon dioxide, which raises the cost of burning natural gas instead. Dr. Eric Ruland, Vice President of Sales and Products at RCT Hydrogen, said.
The high efficiency combined with the long service life of the electrolysis systems represents a decisive competitive advantage for customers.
Dr. Eric Ruland, Vice President of Sales and Products at RCT Hydrogen. Source 1.
The legal entity behind the brand, RCT GH GmbH, was registered in the German commercial register on July 8, 2024, with 100,000 euros in share capital, according to Northdata, an aggregator of the official German business register. That confirms independently just how new this specific corporate vehicle is, even though the parent companies behind it date back further, RCT Solutions founded in 2012 and Guofuhee founded in 2016.