London-listed cash shell Pineapple Power [LON: PNPL] is to appoint former ITM Power CEO Dr Graham Cooley to its board as non-executive chairman, conditional on the completion of an RTO deal with Canada’s Ilios Hydrogen. Also named to join the board are Peter Williams, group CTO at INEOS, and Barry Cunliffe.
Pineapple Power announced in November that it had entered into non-binding heads of terms with the shareholders of Ilios Hydrogen Canada to acquire 100% of the outstanding shares of Ilios in an all-share transaction, subject to legal, financial and other due diligence and entry into a legally binding sales and purchase agreement.
The proposed appointments reflect the focus that Pineapple Power has on the fast-growing hydrogen sector. Shares in the company are currently suspended, as per standard procedure for cash shells following the announcement of an acquisition target.
Ilios Hydrogen Canada is a privately held, Canadian based, international developer of green hydrogen production plants with an existing portfolio of four sites being developed in Italy and three sites in Canada and more recently a further three sites in the United Kingdom. The five year business plan is to develop build and operate up to 2,000 MW of sites in Italy, 125 MW of sites in Canada and a further 200 MW of sites in the UK, serving industrial off takers and the mobility markets.
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Dr Cooley started his career in the power sector in 1989, joining the CEGB and becoming Business Development Manager at National Power plc and then International Power plc, developing energy storage and new generation technologies. He has has raised a total of over £600m for British cleantech SMEs. He is proably most well known with UK investors as CEO of ITM Power, the first hydrogen related company listed on the London Stock Market; but he was also a founding member of the UK Government’s Hydrogen Advisory Council and a Board Member of RenewableUK.
Williams moved to his position at INEOS in January 2017 having spent the previous 11 years as Chief Executive of INEOS Technologies. He also serves as a non-Executive Director on the Supervisory Board of Avantium, is a non-Executive Director of V-Carbon, and until February 2024 was a NED of First Hydrogen UK. He currently sits on the UK’s Building a Green Future Advisory Board and was a member of the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council from 2018-2024.
Cunliffe also has a record in the hydrogen sector: he joined ITM Power as CFO and company secretary in 2009 for over four years, before becoming Group Finance and HR director and company secretary at the Tinsley Bridge Group in Sheffield. He then re-joined ITM Power in 2021 becoming Managing Director of Motive Fuels and head of aftersales.