Energy storage draws Pomeranian industry together as CRIST, ORLEN and Lyten sign letter of intent

A letter of intent signed at the CRIST shipyard in Gdynia has launched a new initiative – the "Pomeranian Zone of Innovation and Energy Development" (Pomorska Strefa Innowacji i Rozwoju Energetyki). Five partners from very different worlds – shipbuilding, state energy, battery technology, academia and regional government – put their names to the document, whose common denominator is energy storage, today the fastest-growing segment of Poland's northern, Baltic-facing energy economy.

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26 june 2026   |   22:18   |   Source: Gazeta Morska   |   Prepared by: Kamil Kusier   |   Print

fot. CRIST S.A.

The signatories are the Gdynia shipbuilder CRIST; ORLEN, Poland's state-controlled oil, gas and energy group; the US battery company Lyten; Gdańsk University of Technology (Politechnika Gdańska); and the Marshal of the Pomeranian Voivodeship, the region's most senior elected official. According to a statement published by CRIST on LinkedIn, the purpose of the document is to declare the parties' willingness to cooperate on the "Pomeranian Zone of Innovation and Energy Development", with particular emphasis on energy storage. The shipyard said the initiative brings together industrial experience, academic expertise, regional-government engagement and the competencies of the energy sector.

A statement of direction, not a binding contract

The standing of the document is worth flagging at the outset. A letter of intent is a declaration of willingness to cooperate, not a binding agreement: it sets a direction but commits no specific spending, timeline or division of work. At the time of writing, the only public source on the signing is the shipyard's own statement; the other partners – ORLEN, Lyten, Gdańsk University of Technology and the Marshal's Office – have not yet issued their own releases, and neither the full text of the document nor the scope of the cooperation has been made public. Any assessment of the project's scale should therefore be treated with caution. Until official communications appear, several of the threads below remain context and interpretation rather than confirmed fact.

The line-up of names is, however, telling enough to read the intent behind the document.

Lyten – the heart of the puzzle

The key to understanding the letter is Lyten's presence. The company, headquartered in San Jose, California, with its European base in Luxembourg, is regarded as a global leader in lithium-sulphur batteries and advanced 3D graphene materials. It holds more than 550 patents, and its investor base is reported to include Stellantis, FedEx, Honeywell, the European Investment Fund and the Luxembourg Future Fund.

For Pomerania, Lyten is above all a specific address on the map. In October 2025 the company completed its acquisition, from the bankrupt Swedish group Northvolt, of the former Northvolt Dwa plant in Gdańsk – located in the Stogi district, on the grounds of the Pomeranian Investment Centre, immediately adjacent to the port. It is the largest battery energy storage system (BESS) production facility in Europe. The 25,000-square-metre site has an annual production capacity of around 6 GWh, with room to expand to 12 GWh. The plant was officially opened under its new ownership on 20 March 2026, attended by Poland's finance and economy minister and regional authorities; production had in fact resumed earlier, in late 2025.

The flagship product of the Gdańsk facility is the Voltpack Mobile System – an AI-based modular energy-management system that coordinates output from a range of power sources. Lyten is already in talks to export it from Gdańsk to five continents. In other words, the remaining signatories are not so much building a "zone" from scratch as assembling an ecosystem around an existing, operating and Europe-leading energy-storage factory.

Why storage, and why now

The emphasis on energy storage is no accident, and it fits the maritime profile of the region well. Pomerania is becoming one of the principal axes of Poland's energy transition. It is here that the country's first offshore wind farm is being built – ORLEN's Baltic Power project – here that Poland's first nuclear power plant is being sited, and here that gas and hydrogen infrastructure is being developed. The rising share of renewables, intermittent by nature, calls for a parallel build-out of storage capacity that can balance the grid. Energy storage is today the fastest-growing segment of the battery market, central to stabilising the system and meeting rising demand from industry and from AI data centres.

In that context, ORLEN's signature has its own logic. The group is Poland's largest energy and fuels player and has tangible projects in the region – from offshore wind to port infrastructure – for which energy storage is a natural complement.

Industry, science and region – the other signatories

The role of host and industrial backbone falls to CRIST. The Gdynia shipyard is one of Poland's strongest players in the offshore wind supply chain: it is the only yard in Europe to have built three offshore wind installation vessels to date, alongside more than a dozen service vessels, and it is currently constructing a modern cable-laying ship, among other projects. CRIST also has a track record of building industry partnerships, having previously signed letters of intent with, among others, Rumia Invest Park (towards a Pomeranian Competence Centre for Offshore Renewable Energy) and with PGE Baltica and Grupa Przemysłowa Baltic (on a fleet for offshore). To the new zone the yard therefore brings construction capacity, skilled labour, location and local-content expertise.

Gdańsk University of Technology provides the research and development base. Significantly, the university's cooperation with Lyten does not begin from zero: as early as the March opening, Gdańsk Tech researchers working on energy and storage, supported by the PG Biznes Hub, were already in discussions with the company about possible joint R&D projects. The present letter can thus be read as a formalisation of a direction that had already been tested.

Finally, regional government – represented by the Marshal of the Pomeranian Voivodeship, Mieczysław Struk – acts as the regional coordinator and host of the process. His presence on the document is no courtesy: it was partly thanks to the intervention of the Marshal and the regional governor (wojewoda) that the resumption of production at the former Northvolt plant was achieved at all.

The dual-use dimension

There is a further strand that, for a region with growing defence ambitions, may prove as important as the energy angle itself. Lyten's portfolio extends well beyond stationary energy storage: the company is developing lithium-sulphur batteries for drones, robots and satellites, and it is targeting its technologies at the defence, aerospace and autonomous-systems sectors.

These plans already have a name. At the March opening, Lyten announced the start of a feasibility study for the Lyten Industrial Hub in Gdańsk – a comprehensive industrial centre that would combine energy-storage manufacturing with infrastructure for artificial intelligence and solutions for defence. It would be the company's second such centre in Europe, after Skellefteå in Sweden. The study is due to be completed by the end of 2026. If the "Pomeranian Zone of Innovation and Energy Development" is genuinely intended to support that vision, its significance reaches beyond energy transition in the narrow sense and feeds into the region's wider dual-use trend.

Part of a wider Pomeranian wave

The letter signed at the shipyard is also best seen as another link in a broader chain of Pomeranian agreements in recent months. In May, during the Infoshare technology conference, the City of Gdańsk, the Polish Development Fund (PFR), the Pomeranian Special Economic Zone and the region's three largest universities signed a letter of intent on developing start-ups, space technologies and dual-use projects. In December 2025, ORLEN concluded an agreement with the Kashubian-Pomeranian Association. Earlier still, both Gdańsk University of Technology and the University of Gdańsk established cooperation with the US engineering group Bechtel on the nuclear project.

The storage signing also coincides with the Gdańsk edition of the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC 2026), at which – separately – PGE, ORLEN, Enea and Tauron initialled a distinct letter of intent on rebuilding Ukraine's energy sector. The two are different matters, easily conflated by anyone skimming energy news out of the Tri-City, but together they illustrate how Gdańsk and Pomerania have lately become a hub for declarations of cooperation in energy and new technologies.

Many open questions, to be answered only by the full statement

At this stage the key details remain open. The substantive scope of the cooperation and the division of roles between the signatories are unknown; it is not clear whether, or how much, investment sits behind the declaration, nor what the timeline will be. Also open is the question of whether the "zone" is to have a formal status – for example a link to the instruments of the Pomeranian Special Economic Zone – or whether, for now, it is an umbrella label tying together the willingness of four institutions and a company around one specific factory.

Those answers should come with the official communications from the other parties and the full text of the document, which can be expected in the coming days. Daily Mare will continue to follow the story.

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Lyten Gdańsk magazynowanie energii CRIST ORLEN Pomorska Strefa Innowacji i Rozwoju Energetyki

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