Agricarbon, the leading provider of direct measurements of soil carbon stock at scale, announced...
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Scottish company raises £9m Series A funding to unlock global soil carbon removal opportunity.
- Agricarbon, the leading soil carbon measurement company, secures funding to unlock the $175 billion market for soil carbon removals[1]
- Funding will be used to accelerate international expansion and meet demand from global clients
- Shell Ventures led the round with participation from Barclays’ Sustainable Impact Capital, specialist food system funds The Nest Family Office and Ananke, carbon removal investor Counteract VC, and global investment manager MFS
- Agricarbon is headquartered in Dundee, Scotland, and currently operates in the UK, Europe and the Americas
- The deal is timely in a week that COP28 focuses on food, farming, and issues around robust carbon measurement and standards
Global demand for standardised soil carbon measurement fuels Agricarbon’s growth
Agricarbon has grown rapidly since commercial launch in 2021, with revenues tripling this financial year. The company already serves an international client base which includes some of the world’s largest food and beverage companies, carbon project developers and natural capital asset managers.
Having launched operations in Europe in 2022 and in North America earlier this year, international projects already contribute more than 50% of Agricarbon’s turnover. In 2024, Agricarbon will establish a dedicated US entity to service large projects in the Americas, measuring soil carbon removals across hundreds of thousands of hectares of grass and arable farmland. The company is also planning to expand to other regions, prioritising zones of major commodity crop production and areas with significant potential for nature restoration.
Annie Leeson, CEO and Co-Founder of Agricarbon, comments:
“To increase the funding for large-scale soil carbon restoration, benefit claims and credits must be founded on high integrity, highly consistent, and independent primary data. Securing investment from two major stakeholders, Shell and Barclays, affirms the need for our data to increase confidence in soil carbon removals for carbon buyers, food companies and financial markets. Expanding Agricarbon’s service is catalytic for the growth of sustainable market incentives: unlocking more value for farmers and landowners that deliver real carbon removals on the ground, and ensuring natural capital investment can target areas of genuine and meaningful climate benefit.”
Nestlé, the biggest food company in the world, is working with its network of more than 500,000 farmers and 150,000 suppliers, to accelerate the transition to a regenerative food system.
Matt Ryan, Regeneration Lead for Nestlé UK & Ireland comments:
“The potential for regenerative practices to reduce and remove carbon in our supply chain is essential to achieving our Net Zero roadmap, and brings substantial environmental and social benefits to our farming communities. Agricarbon provides consistent and reliable evidence of carbon removed into soils, supporting agronomic decisions to build soil health, and ensuring accurate carbon reporting. Agricarbon’s geographic expansion enables a valuable foundation of soil monitoring data to underpin our work.”
Cultivo, a US-based Public Benefit Company, is building a global portfolio of high quality, natural capital regeneration projects that attracts major investors and carbon buyers.
Manuel Piñuela, CEO of Cultivo, comments:
“Cultivo’s proprietary algorithms thrive on good quality ground truth data, at scale and across diverse natural ecosystems. Agricarbon, one of our soil carbon measurement partners, delivers the quality of data that gives investors in high-quality natural capital projects the confidence they are looking for.”
Addie Pinkster, CEO & founder of Adelpha, the corporate advisor that led the deal, comments:
“Carbon removal is a large and growing climate industry, with increasing focus on agricultural soils as a large and untapped carbon sink. As agricultural land transitions to regenerative farming practices, it is estimated that soils could technically sequester one to five gigatonnes (billion tonnes) of carbon dioxide per year.
This is a significant opportunity for major food and beverage companies, who are incentivised by the benefits of decarbonising their supply chain, increasing biodiversity, improving resistance to flood and drought, and restoring soil health for a sustainable future food system. Other industries are also keen to support this transition, either to reduce climate risk for food and farming customers (e.g. banking and insurance sectors), reduce net emissions in their supply chain (e.g. agricultural-input companies) or as buyers of agricultural carbon offsets (e.g. transport and tech sectors).
As a result, corporates and natural capital investors are pouring funding into soil carbon removal projects. However, until recently, the roadblock has been the problem of how to measure carbon in the soil accurately and at scale. This is compounded for international corporates and carbon markets, where standardised and consistent data across farming systems and geographies is vital
Agricarbon has changed that, which is why they are working with global food and beverage companies to support some of the most-advanced agricultural carbon removal programmes in the world. Companies that are focused on agricultural soil carbon removal and regenerative farming recognise that Agricarbon is a key part of the solution. This funding round shows that leading investors understand that too.”
Soil carbon removal as a scalable climate solution
Agricultural soil carbon removals are vital to meet food industry net zero commitments and represent the fastest growing sector in the voluntary carbon market[1]. Scientists calculate that soil could absorb up to 20% of carbon emissions from human activities[2], enabled by changes to land use and farming practices[3].
Restoration of carbon into soil is linked directly to increased biodiversity, improved water retention and more resilient crop yields. The benefits go beyond the carbon removal value, particularly in farming regions hardest hit by climate extremes.
Prior to Agricarbon’s launch in 2021, the potential to harness this vast climate solution was blocked by the absence of scalable, reliable and cost-effective measurement to quantify changes in soil carbon stock. Today, Agricarbon’s proprietary direct measurement technology provides the primary data needed to unlock this opportunity.
The investment will enable Agricarbon to expand capacity across Europe and North America and explore opportunities to support soil carbon restoration in other regions. The move will meet the need for large-scale, consistent soil monitoring data from international food and beverage clients and improve the quality and reliability of credits being generated in the fast-growing market for nature-based carbon removals.
According to the UN Finance for Nature, investment in this market needs to double to £300bn by 2025 to meet climate, biodiversity, and land degradation goals[4]. Scaling Agricarbon’s service will deepen understanding of the state of soil degradation around the world and accelerate efforts to deploy soil carbon removals at scale.
Contact
Addie Pinkster; addie@adelpha-group.com; +44(0) 7590 079 809
Founder & CEO, Adelpha Group (Corporate Advisor)
[1] 2030 estimate
[2] Ecosystem Marketplace, State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets report, 2023
[3] Rodríguez-Albarracín et al; Potential of soil minerals to sequester soil organic carbon; Geoderma, 2023
[4] Paustian et al; Soil C Sequestration as a Biological Negative Emission Strategy; Frontiers in Climate, 2019
[5] United Nations Environment Programme; State of Finance for Nature, 2022
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