Linde Gas: From “green” hydrogen to dry ice for food

When it comes to gas – whether for medical purposes, for industry (welding), dry ice, gastronomy or for barbecuing – there is hardly any way around Linde Gas in Upper Austria. The Lambach oxygen and hydrogen plant was founded in 1914, and since 1985 the headquarters and Austrian headquarters of Linde Gas GmbH, which belongs to the Linde plc group, have been in Stadl-Paura. There are also branches in Vienna, Graz, Linz, Eggendorf, Wörgl and Klagenfurt.

Image: xH

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The Austrian headquarters of Linde Gas is located in Stadl-Paura.
Image: xH

330 employees, 200 of them in Stadl-Paura, produce 600 gases and gas mixtures such as oxygen, nitrogen, argon or hydrogen for around 300 applications – a constantly growing market. “Here in Upper Austria we also have the last acetylene plant in the whole of Austria,” says Managing Director Martin Haslinger. The workshops and the company’s own technical department are important for site security, especially in times of crisis, as has been shown with Corona. Linde Gas also supplies most hospitals with life-saving oxygen, which is also increasingly being used at home when patients are ill. “It’s a sophisticated system to ensure supplies even when on vacation,” says Haslinger.

However, Linde Austria’s main business (turnover 333 million euros) is large systems and pipelines for industry. Linde Gas GmbH is one of the leading industrial and medical gas manufacturers in Austria. In Graz and on the voestalpine site in Linz, Linde Gas operates large air separation plants that break down air into its components and then use them for production. The company is also active in hydrogen, “we have been working with it for 100 years,” says Haslinger. More than 200 hydrogen filling stations have now been built. In his view, hydrogen will play a role in the future, especially in industry and heavy transport.

A growing business area is currently dry ice, which is used to cool food – not only in the hot summer, because since Amazon, Rewe and other retailers have increasingly started shipping food, demand has risen sharply, according to Haslinger.
Dry ice is carbon dioxide in solid form and has a temperature of around minus 80 degrees Celsius. “This temperature remains constant, the gas evaporates, and at the end there are no residues left,” says Haslinger. These are advantages – compared to conventional water cooling, for example. For this reason, aircraft caterers such as Do & Co have been using dry ice in large quantities for years.