Air Liquide inaugurated its first hydrogen filling station for fuel cell vehicles in the Netherlands at the beginning of September in Rotterdam.

The French industrial gases producer said the station, its first in the Netherlands, has capacity to refuel 50 cars per day, adding that one hydrogen full tank, which takes under five minutes to achieve, will give Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles a range of 500-600 km.

This filling station is part of the Hydrogen Infrastructure for Transport, HIT, a European hydrogen infrastructure deployment project run by Air Liquide and six other European partners.

The project has received financial backing from the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), a European Commission program which aims to support the development of transport infrastructures.

Air Liquide also is actively involved in setting up the hydrogen energy industry at global level. It already designed and supplied over 60 hydrogen filling stations around the world. The first one intended for the general public opened in 2012 in Düsseldorf, Germany.

In 2014, the company also announced the first national hydrogen infrastructure network in Europe, which will include four new hydrogen filling stations in Denmark.