H55 begins construction of North American premises in Montreal area

H55 has begun con­struc­tion of its Cana­di­an premis­es to meet the grow­ing demands of its North Amer­i­can cus­tomer base, and formed a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary at Saint-Hubert Air­port in the greater Mon­tre­al area.

H55 Cana­da will col­lab­o­rate with exist­ing cus­tomers, includ­ing Pratt & Whit­ney Cana­da, CAE, and Har­bour Air, for prod­uct devel­op­ment, cus­tomiza­tion, and cus­tomer sup­port.

The new facil­i­ty will be equipped with ini­tial bat­tery pack pro­duc­tion sched­uled in 2024. The cer­e­mo­ny includ­ed H55 stake­hold­ers, cus­tomers, sup­pli­ers, gov­ern­ment offi­cials and mem­bers of the local com­mu­ni­ty.

The Hon­ourable Pablo Rodriguez, Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Québec Lieu­tenant, stat­ed: “The aero­nau­tics indus­try has a long his­to­ry in Que­bec and is a source of pride.

“By invest­ing in sci­en­tif­ic inno­va­tion in the aero­nau­tics sec­tor, we are ensur­ing we can con­tin­ue to cul­ti­vate the exper­tise we have acquired in Que­bec, while also sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment of tech­nolo­gies that will help us accel­er­ate our tran­si­tion to green ener­gy.”

Pierre Fitzgib­bon, Québec Min­is­ter of Econ­o­my, Inno­va­tion and Ener­gy added: “Québec has every­thing need­ed to design, man­u­fac­ture, and mar­ket inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy, to address the envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges of the planes of tomor­row. The H55 project will help bol­ster our exper­tise in aero­space while lever­ag­ing our trans­porta­tion elec­tri­fi­ca­tion ecosys­tem.”

May­or Cather­ine Fournier of Longueuil con­tin­ued: “This is an unequiv­o­cal recog­ni­tion of our poten­tial as an inno­va­tion hub and our com­mit­ment to a green avi­a­tion future.

“The arrival of H55 in Longueuil not only strength­ens our posi­tion­ing in the aero­space sec­tor but marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in our jour­ney toward estab­lish­ing an inno­va­tion zone duly rec­og­nized by Québec.

“The aero­nau­ti­cal ecosys­tem of Longueuil can count on numer­ous renowned com­pa­nies and aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions work­ing in syn­er­gy, so we look for­ward to see­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tions that will emerge between H55 and our local aero­space com­mu­ni­ty.”

H55 Co-Founder and Exec­u­tive Chair­man, André Borschberg rejoined: “As we break ground for this new fac­to­ry and office facil­i­ty, we are shap­ing the future of avi­a­tion with the sup­port we are for­tu­nate to have from the Gov­ern­ments of Québec, Cana­da and Saint-Hubert.”

H55 CEO Mar­tin Larose con­clud­ed: “Saint-Hubert is a strate­gic loca­tion for H55’s oper­a­tions and will be the home to our bat­tery pro­duc­tion serv­ing our Cana­di­an cus­tomers.”

H55 con­tributed to Solar Impulse, the world’s first solar-pow­ered elec­tric aero­plane to cir­cum­nav­i­gate the globe. The com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly ben­e­fit­ing from fed­er­al gov­ern­ment sup­port through the Aero­space Region­al Recov­ery Ini­tia­tive (ARRI), Cana­da Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment (DEC) and is active­ly engaged in dis­cus­sions to for­malise sup­port from the Québec gov­ern­ment.

Last month, H55 suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the first part of its Series C financ­ing round by secur­ing CHF 45 mil­lion in financ­ing.

Swiss elec­tric propul­sion spe­cial­ist H55 rais­es CHF 45 mil­lion