ErreDue Acquires Piel Brand from McPhy Energy Italia for €100,000

ErreDue S.p.A., the Livorno-based gas generation and electrolysis company, has completed the acquisition of the Piel trademark from McPhy Energy Italia for €100,000. The deal, announced Tuesday, transfers full ownership of the Piel brand - a long-running name in hydrogen and oxygen generators for light industrial brazing - to ErreDue's portfolio.

The transaction is small in headline price. Its operational significance is larger.

What Piel Is, and Why It Matters

Piel machines are hydrogen and oxygen generators rated from 0.4 to 10 Nm³/h at 1 to 8 bar, designed specifically for light manufacturing. The range covers brazing, welding, jewelry and goldsmithing, electronics, meteorology, and glass working - sectors that have sourced on-site electrolytic gas for decades rather than relying on cylinder supply.

The Piel range has accumulated more than 3,000 references worldwide, built from decade-long experience in the goldsmithing sector, precious metal treatment, and metalworking. That installed base is the core asset here, not the trademark itself.

Using gas produced by Piel requires approximately 5.5 kWh to produce 1 Nm³ of gas. The specific characteristics of hydrogen and oxygen allow a 20% saving on brazing operations, with a work-speed improvement of 15-25%. Those are the numbers that keep the goldsmithing and precision manufacturing sectors tied to on-site electrolysis rather than bottled gas.

Photo: Dima Solomin / Unsplash

The McPhy Liquidation Context

The seller is McPhy Energy Italia, the Italian subsidiary of the French electrolyzer group McPhy Energy. The parent company's collapse is the backdrop to this deal.

In June 2025, McPhy filed for bankruptcy protection with the Commercial Court of Belfort. On July 8, 2025, the court approved John Cockerill Hydrogen's offer to acquire part of McPhy's assets. That acquisition covered a significant part of McPhy's activities and assets - notably the Belfort Gigafactory, its technologies and intellectual property - along with more than 70% of its French employees, 51 out of a total workforce of 71.

The French assets went to John Cockerill. The Italian subsidiary followed a separate path. McPhy Energy Italia is currently in compulsory liquidation, and the process of selling off its assets is underway - including the Piel brand, which has now been acquired by ErreDue.

The Piel trademark is therefore a liquidation-estate asset, acquired at a price that reflects that context. For ErreDue, the timing creates an opening: a recognized brand with an active installed base, available without a competitive auction against a solvent seller.

What ErreDue Gets - and What It Plans to Do

Three things transfer with the trademark.

Brand recognition. The sale involves full ownership of the Piel brand, a leading name in brazing and soldering machinery and technologies. Piel-branded machines stand out for the breadth of their range and the accessibility of the technology used - enabling market entry without compromising on high quality standards. That accessibility is a deliberate positioning: Piel sits at the lower-cost end of on-site electrolysis, pulling in customers who might otherwise default to cylinder gas.

Maintenance revenue. The transaction transfers management of maintenance for the entire installed base of Piel machines. The integration of a new range of dedicated purifiers will further enhance the performance of Piel machines, while the management of maintenance for the existing fleet will strengthen ErreDue's relationship with a broad and well-established customer base. Aftermarket service on a base of more than 3,000 machines in the field is a recurring revenue stream that the headline price does not reflect.

A product extension. ErreDue's stated plan is to add a dedicated purifier line for Piel machines. The brazing sector is strategically linked to the goldsmithing industry, which traditionally uses hydrogen and oxygen produced in-house via electrolysis for manufacturing processes - a sector in which ErreDue itself has a long-standing presence. Pairing its existing electrolyzer know-how with Piel-branded purifiers gives ErreDue a more complete system offering in a market it already serves.

ErreDue's Position

ErreDue is a pioneer in zero-emission hydrogen electrolysis, at the forefront of research, development, production, and commercialization of electrolyzers for on-site generation of clean hydrogen and generators of other technical gases - nitrogen and oxygen - for industrial, laboratory, medical, and energy transition applications.

ErreDue was founded in the year 2000 by a group of experts in gas generation and engineering. It listed on Euronext Growth Milan in December 2022. Recent contract activity illustrates the range of applications it targets: the company signed an agreement to supply a 1 MW alkaline electrolyzer to a major Italian ceramics operator, with the fully containerized system - integrated with a nitrogen generator and a medium-to-low voltage transformer - to be installed at a facility in Emilia-Romagna, enabling production of around 132 tonnes of green hydrogen per year for use in a hydrogen-ready industrial kiln.

The Piel deal sits at the opposite end of the scale - compact machines for precision workshops rather than MW-class industrial systems. That breadth is the point. ErreDue is building a portfolio that spans from laboratory-scale generators to industrial decarbonization contracts, with the brazing segment filling a gap between the two.

The Forty-Year Overlap

Both companies cite more than four decades of sector experience. That overlap is operationally relevant: ErreDue's engineers already understand the electrochemistry behind Piel machines. The purifier line ErreDue plans to develop for Piel equipment is not a new technology direction - it is an extension of gas purification work the company already does across its existing product range.

CEO Francesca Barontini framed it directly: the acquisition combines "the widespread reach of this historic brand with ErreDue's industrial quality and know-how," with the purifier integration and maintenance takeover designed to deepen the relationship with an existing customer base rather than build one from scratch.

What to Watch

The Piel deal is a brand and maintenance acquisition, not a manufacturing or IP transfer. ErreDue will need to re-establish supply chains for Piel machine components and build out the purifier line before the operational benefits fully materialize. The maintenance book is the most immediately tangible asset - it converts an installed base into a service contract pipeline.

For the broader market, the transaction is one more data point in the ongoing redistribution of McPhy's assets. John Cockerill took the gigafactory and the large-scale electrolyzer IP. ErreDue took the light-industry brand. The Italian installed base now has a named service provider. That continuity matters to the goldsmithing and precision manufacturing workshops that depend on these machines for daily production.