We design and manufacture proton-exchange-membrane fuel-cell stacks — precision hardware that turns hydrogen into clean, silent electricity. Built at the Cape, for the energy transition.
The world is electrifying — but electrons are hard to store, and harder to ship.
Hydrogen stores energy as a molecule: dense, clean at the point of use, ready to move.
South Africa has the sun, the wind, and the platinum-group metals at the heart of every PEM fuel cell.
What the hydrogen economy needs now is hardware. That's what we build.
Cape Stack is a fuel-cell component manufacturer based in Cape Town. We engineer the stacks, plates and membrane assemblies that convert green hydrogen into electricity — no combustion, no noise, and water as the only exhaust.
A PEM fuel cell has no flame and no moving parts. Scroll to follow one hydrogen molecule through the five steps that turn it into electric current.
Green hydrogen enters the anode flow field and spreads through the diffusion layer.
No combustion. No moving parts in the cell. The only exhaust is water.
Every Cape Stack unit shares the same cell platform — CNC-machined bipolar plates, in-house membrane-electrode assemblies, and a burn-in test before anything ships. Choose the power class; the engineering carries over.
Air-cooled stack for backup power, telecoms and off-grid sites. Quiet enough to forget, reliable enough to depend on.
| Rated power | 5–15 kW |
| Cell count | 40–80 |
| Cooling | Open-cathode, air |
| Voltage | 24–72 V DC |
| Start-up | <30 s cold-start |
| For | Telecom backup · off-grid · light mobility |
Liquid-cooled traction stack for buses, trucks, mining vehicles and marine. Built for duty cycles that never let up.
| Rated power | 30–80 kW |
| Cell count | 120–240 |
| Cooling | Liquid, integrated loop |
| Efficiency | up to ~60% (LHV rated) |
| Power density | automotive-grade |
| For | Heavy transport · mining · marine |
Modular stationary stack for firm, dispatchable power. Parallel units scale from a clinic to a campus to a megawatt.
| Rated | 100–250 kW/module |
| Architecture | Parallel-modular, N+1 ready |
| Cooling | Liquid, heat-recovery ready |
| Output | DC bus / grid-tie via inverter |
| Modules | Hot-swappable |
| For | Microgrids · data & health facilities · industry |
Figures are representative of the platform class and shown for illustration — request a datasheet for current certified specifications.
Fuel-cell trucks and buses refuel in minutes and carry no tonne of battery dead-weight. For South Africa's long corridors and deep mines, hydrogen is the drivetrain that doesn't compromise — full torque, zero diesel particulates, water out the tailpipe.
When the grid dips, a fuel-cell module picks up the load in silence — no fumes, no fuel runs, no maintenance-heavy generator on the roof. Paired with solar and an electrolyser, it turns midday sun into power at midnight.
Green hydrogen is the feedstock of clean industry — ammonia, refining, steel. Our stacks and components serve the pilot plants and process sites building that value chain on African renewables.
Cape Stack was founded on a simple conviction: the hydrogen economy will be built by the people who can actually manufacture it. From our facility in Cape Town, our team of engineers designs, machines, assembles and tests PEM fuel-cell stacks and components — keeping the full loop, from CAD to burn-in bench, under one roof.
We work with research partners, vehicle integrators and energy developers across the region, and we hold ourselves to a manufacturing standard the industry can build on. Every plate is measured. Every assembly is traced. Every stack earns its serial number under load before it leaves the building.
Tell us what you're building — a vehicle programme, a site that can't go dark, a pilot plant. Our engineers reply to every serious enquiry.