NitroCapt raises 2.8 M€ to develop a pilot plant for fossil-free production of nitrogen fertilizers
NitroCapt has invented a novel chemical process, SUNIFIX®, for the production of climate-neutral nitrogen fertilizers in order to contribute to both agricultural sustainability and productivity. The company has now received public and private funding of close to 3M€ to build their first pilot plant.
The production of nitrogen fertilizers causes 2,5% of the global fossil-related greenhouse gas emissions. To date, no one has developed a cost-effective, emission-free process that can compete with conventional production. But Sweden-based start-up NitroCapt now accelerates the development of the novel chemical process SUNIFIX® and aims at setting a new standard for large-scale fossil-free production of nitrogen fertilizers.
NitroCapt has just received funding of approx. 1.8M€ from LRF Ventures, Almi Invest GreenTech, EIT InnoEnergy and additional investors, for the development of its first pilot plant. Completed by another 1M€ in grants, the company will now invest a total of almost 3M€ over the next two years to build the pilot facility in Germany.
Nitrogen fertilizer is today produced using the Haber Bosch process, which alone is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than any other chemical process. Synthetic fertilizers are crucial in order to manage the global food supply, which makes the transition to climate-neutral agriculture a great challenge. But NitroCapt’s groundbreaking solution can be the answer as it that only needs water and renewable electricity to fix nitrogen from the air.
“It’s incredibly exciting that we, together with our visionary investors, get the possibility to develop a solution to a big global challenge for agriculture and the climate. Thanks to this, we can now start recruitment of a number of highly qualified engineers and take the first steps towards a commercialisation of our process,” says Gustaf Forsberg, founder and CEO.
LRF Ventures, ALMI Invest GreenTech, EIT InnoEnergy, SLU Holding and the serial entrepreneur and Graphmatech co-founder Björn Lindh are among the investors.
NitroCapt was founded in 2016 by the CEO Gustaf Forsberg, who earlier was a key person in the development of the ThermoSeed technology for pesticide-free seed treatment, and Peter Baeling, a chemical engineer who has developed the world’s largest sterile continuous fermentor. NitroCapt’s head office is at Green Innovation Park on the SLU campus at Ultuna, Uppsala, Sweden. The company is part of EIT InnoEnergy’s Highway programme, that has financed the company’s activities until now.