Cotierra raises $3M to scale decentralised biochar technology in tropical agriculture
Zurich-based climate technology company Cotierra has raised $3 million to move its technology from successful field deployments to repeatable commercial operations. With this latest funding, the company has raised a total of $4.75 million since it was founded.
Across tropical agricultural supply chains, significant amounts of agricultural waste are often left unused. At the same time, farmers are facing declining productivity as soil health worsens and extreme weather events become more frequent.
Food and beverage companies are also under growing pressure to cut emissions across their supply chains, while climate change is making agricultural supply less predictable.
Cotierra aims to address these challenges by developing the technology infrastructure needed to make decentralised biochar production easier to deploy and scale across tropical agriculture.
Its end-to-end solution combines decentralised reactor technology with a digital platform that helps operate, monitor and verify biochar production. The system allows agricultural businesses to convert leftover biomass into biochar close to where it is produced, return carbon to the soil and track the impact over time.
For customers, the technology can help improve farmer productivity and resilience while reducing supply-chain emissions and supporting carbon removal.
After successfully testing and deploying its technology within the coffee value chain, Cotierra is now working to turn these field deployments into a fully integrated hardware and software product that can be rolled out at scale.
The funding round was led by PINC, the venture arm of international food and beverage company Paulig, and Carbon Removal Partners. The round also included Zürcher Kantonalbank, Carbon Drawdown Initiative, better ventures, GOTA Ventures, Hungry4Impact and Triple Impact Ventures, as well as climate- and impact-focused angel investors.
Thomas Käslin, CEO and Co-Founder, Cotierra said:
"We have shown that decentralised biochar offers a highly effective pathway to decarbonise and strengthen tropical agricultural value chains where biomass is widely dispersed. Now we are making it simple, reliable and scalable.
Our ambition is to make it the standard solution for agricultural companies to strengthen farmer productivity and resilience while reducing emissions and removing carbon across their supply chains."
Cotierra initially developed its model around coffee and is now expanding into other tropical agricultural commodities, including cocoa, cotton and citrus.
Karl Swensson, Investment Director, PINC said:
“What stood out to us about Cotierra is the strong traction the company has achieved with coffee traders through a solution that delivers value for farmers, traders and coffee companies alike.
We believe decentralised biochar can play an important role in reducing emissions and improving resilience in coffee-growing regions.”
According to Max Zeller, Founder & Partner, Carbon Removal Partners, Cotierra addresses a major untapped opportunity in tropical agriculture by leveraging agricultural waste to create resilient value chains, while delivering environmental benefits.
“Cotierra has built the foundation to become a leading technology platform for more resilient and higher-yielding value chains across the tropics.”