Cotierra AG has received 3 million U.S. dollars. The funding round was led by PINC, the venture capital arm of the Paulig Group (Helsinki), and Carbon Removal Partners (Zurich). Other participants included Zurich Cantonal Bank, the Carbon Drawdown Initiative (Fürth), better ventures (Munich), Gota Ventures (Madrid), Hungry4Impact (Milan), and Triple Impact Ventures (Vienna), as well as business angels focused on climate and social impact.
“This investment will turn successful field deployments into an integrated product that our clients can deploy reliably across their operations,” according to a statement from the Zurich-based startup, which was founded in 2023. Cotierra specializes in scalable infrastructure to future-proof the agricultural supply chains of food and beverage companies. Its solution harnesses biowaste from farms in the tropics and converts it into biochar. To date, Cotierra has focused on applying its technology on coffee plantations.
The team has extensive expertise in research and development, carbon markets, and the coffee supply chain. According to Swiss startup incubator Venture Kick, based in Schlieren, in the Swiss canton of Zurich, Cotierra has already generated 5 million U.S. dollars in revenue from carbon markets and coffee industry players such as Jacobs Coffee, Kaufland, LDC, and the Neumann Coffee Group. Its partnerships with three of the five largest coffee traders provide access to more than two million coffee farmers. Shortly after its founding, Cotierra had received two pre-seed fundings from Venture Kick totaling 60,000 Swiss francs.
Cotierra says it plans to use the newly raised capital to expand its expertise to tropical growing regions for cocoa, cotton, and citrus fruits. The aim is to “establish decentralised biochar as a cornerstone of tropical regenerative agriculture”, helping make the sector “more productive, resilient and lower-emission”. ce/mm