ESSEN, Germany — Evonik Industries announced Friday that its newly commissioned industrial-scale polymer membrane production facility has cleared its first operational milestone, with output metrics confirming the company is on track to undercut current green hydrogen production costs by a meaningful margin before the end of the decade.

The Essen-based specialty chemicals giant revealed throughput figures from the facility that suggest membrane manufacturing costs have dropped roughly 30 percent compared with pilot-scale production, a reduction that company engineers said translates directly into lower electrolyser stack costs for customers. Evonik's electrochemical membranes are designed as a direct competitor to established perfluorosulfonic acid membranes, which currently dominate the proton exchange membrane electrolyser market and are dominated by a small number of suppliers including Chemours and W.L. Gore.

Chief Technology Officer Thomas Riermeier said the ramp-up validated two years of process engineering investment. 'Scaling polymer membrane synthesis without sacrificing ionic conductivity has been the central challenge. These numbers tell us we have solved it at the industrial level,' Riermeier said in a prepared statement. The facility, located at Evonik's Marl Chemical Park in North Rhine-Westphalia, is designed to supply membranes for electrolyser manufacturers across Europe and Asia.

The announcement arrived as European governments are under increasing pressure to demonstrate tangible progress on green hydrogen infrastructure ahead of updated EU climate benchmarks due later in 2026. Analysts at Wood Mackenzie noted that a credible low-cost membrane supply chain has been one of the missing structural components in European hydrogen scale-up plans, and that Evonik's facility represents a meaningful step toward closing that gap.

Evonik said it expects to enter supply agreements with at least two major electrolyser original equipment manufacturers by the third quarter of 2026 and projected the facility would reach full nameplate capacity within 18 months. The company also confirmed it is in discussions with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs regarding potential co-funding under the national hydrogen strategy, though no formal agreement has been finalised.