Cotierra raises $3M to turn agricultural waste into permanent carbon removal at farm level

Cotierra (Zurich) has raised $3 million (approximately €2.7 million), co-led by PINC — the venture arm of international food company Paulig — and Carbon Removal Partners. Other investors include Zürcher Kantonalbank, Carbon Drawdown Initiative, better ventures, GOTA Ventures, Hungry4Impact, Triple Impact Ventures, and climate-focused angels. The round brings Cotierra's total funding to $4.75 million. The company builds decentralised biochar production technology for tropical agricultural supply chains.

Biochar at the source

Cotierra's model addresses a structural inefficiency in tropical agriculture: large volumes of crop residue — stalks, husks, shells — go unused or are burned, while farmers see soil quality deteriorate and food companies face increasing pressure to reduce supply-chain emissions.

The company's solution is an end-to-end hardware and software system that makes it practical to convert residual biomass into biochar close to where it is generated. Biochar — charcoal produced from organic material under low-oxygen conditions — is a stable form of carbon that improves soil water retention and fertility when returned to agricultural land, and generates verifiable carbon removal credits for the supply chain companies that fund it.

Cotierra's system combines decentralised reactor technology with a digital platform that monitors and verifies biochar production, linking farmers, agricultural businesses, and carbon credit buyers in a traceable chain. The company has proven the model in the coffee value chain — the target crop for its first commercial deployments.

From coffee to scale

The round will fund the transition from successful field pilots to a commercially repeatable integrated product. Thomas Käslin, CEO and co-founder, is explicit about the current state: "We are making it simple, reliable and scalable" — language that signals the technology is proven and the work now is engineering for repeatability.

PINC's involvement is not purely financial. Paulig sources coffee from the tropical regions where Cotierra operates, creating a potential commercial relationship that bypasses the typical pilot-to-contract sales cycle. Karl Swensson, Investment Director at PINC, noted the company's "strong traction with coffee traders through a solution that delivers value for farmers, traders and coffee companies alike."

Cotierra is next expanding into cocoa, cotton, and citrus — each sharing the decentralised biomass dynamics of coffee, but each requiring adaptation of the hardware and the agronomic protocols.