If there was one thing McDonald’s did for the world, it started a burger restaurant relatively easily. Franchisees buy into the system, and in return they get equipment, marketing and even operating manuals.
Terraton wants to bring the same model to Biochar. Biochar is a technology that converts agricultural waste into carbon dioxide-induced fertilizers.
Terraton recently raised a $11.5 million seed round for its “box business” approach to BioChar Project Development. The series was led by Low Carbon Capital and Gigascale Capital. The ANA Holdings ‘ANA Future Frontier Fund and East Japan Railway Company’s Takaya Railway Gateway Global Co-Benefit Fund and many angel investors participated, including Google’s Jeff Dean and Openai board member Bret Taylor.
“Most biochar facilities, people have built them before,” said Greg Dalesandre, co-founder of Terraton. “They have never learned or made progress.”
Terraton bets that it will help a small number of partners build biochar facilities, and from that experience it has cloned many companies and their facilities that want to enter the business. Along the way, they are developing SaaS components to run plants, measure and verify carbon credits, and sell to large companies.
Co-founders and CEOs Kevin Gibbs and D’Alesandre believe BioChar is ripe for its franchise approach. This technology allows waste materials to burn in the absence of oxygen and incorporates the resulting black material into the soil, where it stores carbon for hundreds of years while improving soil health.
“Science is solved. It’s reliable and is offered today. It’s a good price. But the problem is that the supply is bound. “When talking to big buyers like Microsoft, Google, Airbus (such as companies), they want to buy more and can’t find more places to buy it.”
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Part of the problem, he said, is that biochar facilities need to be built near agricultural waste to minimize transportation costs. Gibbs said a single facility could produce enough biochar to acquire around 10,000 metres of carbon dioxide each year. “There are a lot of that, but if you have an AI data center, that’s not that much.”
So far, the company has developed two facilities in Africa. One is in Ghana and the other is in Kenya. The former buys waste from cocoa producers, while the other removes the residue from the nut processor. Together, Terraton expects to remove 20,000 tons a year.
The local businesses own biochar equipment, Gibbs said. “We need someone who has relationships with all these farmers,” he said. “It’s great to have them have skin in the game and feel the sense of ownership. But we’re trying to do everything we can to make them succeed.”
