AP Ventures is pleased to announce its investment in Airhive, alongside co-investor Coca-Cola Europacific Partners. Airhive’s low-cost, energy-efficient and rapidly scaleable direct air capture technology has the potential to support the achievement of global warming and net-zero targets.
London, 20th March 2024: Airhive has announced the close of its first investment round, supporting the delivery of one of the largest direct air capture (DAC) pilots in the world.¹
Airhive, founded in 2022, is a UK-based DAC company developing a low-cost, energy-efficient and rapidly scalable technology to capture carbon from the atmosphere. The pre-seed investment was co-led by AP Ventures and Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP), the world’s largest bottler of Coca-Cola, with participation from US-based Collaborative Fund and angel investors.
The funding from the pre-seed round will support Airhive’s technology development and the delivery of its second commercial pilot, which will be deployed this year. Through this project, CCEP will pilot the use of Airhive’s 1,000 tonne DAC system on one of its sites, capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide to replace fossil fuel-derived carbon dioxide in its carbonated drinks. This move aligns with CCEP’s aim to reduce absolute emissions across its value chain by 30% by 2030 and to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040.
This news follows Airhive’s announcement of its partnership with Deep Sky, which will see the deployment of another commercial pilot of Airhive’s DAC system at Deep Sky Labs in Quebec, Canada, where carbon captured by Airhive’s system will be geologically stored for millennia. Each of Airhive’s 2024 commercial pilots will have the capacity to capture 1,000 tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide annually.
Commenting on the new funding, Rory Brown, co-founder and CEO of Airhive said: “We face a huge challenge in climate change - on top of rapidly decarbonising our energy system and agriculture, we need to remove huge quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to have a hope of limiting warming to 1.5℃ by the end of the century. This challenge requires a huge collective effort, combining industrial technologies like ours with tree planting, peatland restoration, CO2 removal from oceans and many other innovative carbon removal approaches.
Our contribution to this collective mission is a DAC technology that is reaching technological maturity fast and can therefore scale quickly. With this new funding and these partnerships, we are one step closer to realising our ambitions of helping businesses deliver on their net zero commitment more affordably, whether through high-integrity carbon credits or sourcing low-cost air-captured CO2 to decarbonise their production.”
“We are thrilled about our investment in Airhive, its exceptional founding team, and the promising path its technology is taking in revolutionizing direct air capture economics," said Andrew Hinkly, Managing Partner at AP Ventures. "We eagerly anticipate collaborating with the Airhive team, alongside our fellow investors, as the company swiftly expands and advances its technology and product offerings."
Matthijs Kostelijk, Director at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners said:
“Carbonation transforms ordinary liquids into some of our best-loved drinks. The science behind those bubbles could also offer an innovative way to help us accelerate the decarbonisation of our business, by reducing emissions in our production processes.
"We’re always on the lookout for new technologies which can help us to reach our goal of a low-carbon future and we’ve been impressed with Airhive’s progress. I’m excited to see where this project takes us.”
About Airhive and its technology
Airhive’s patent-pending process utilises “fluidised bed” technology to capture carbon from the air. Fluidised beds are commonly used in industry for applications such as mineral processing, and drying foods and medication, and Airhive repurposes this proven, low-cost industrial technology to capture carbon dioxide from the air rapidly - capturing over 99% of carbon dioxide from air that passes through the central vessel in less than 0.1 seconds. By optimising existing technology, Airhive is slashing the costs traditionally associated with developing and deploying DAC, reducing a critical barrier to scaling this important technology. Captured carbon can then be stored permanently or used for decarbonisation of industrial processes.
In February, Airhive commenced testing on its first pilot system at Teesside University’s Net Zero Industry Innovation Centre through a collaboration supported by Innovate UK. This pilot, which has a 60 tonne per annum scale, will be fully operational in June 2024.
¹ Airhive and CCEP DAC deployment will offer 1,000 tonnes of annual direct air capture capacity.
Please note that this press release was produced and distributed by Airhive
