New Zealand venture capital and angel investors have provided an oversubscribed $NZ4 million capital round for agri-tech company Hot Lime Labs.
Contributors to the round include existing investors Flying Kiwi Angels and Icehouse Ventures plus government-backed Climate Venture Capital Fund which came in as a new investor taking a 2.36% stake.
Lower Hutt-based Hot Lime Labs says it uses world-leading CO2 capture technology to produce clean and sustainable CO2 from waste wood. The company’s technology uses a novel process to store CO2 in patented limestone pellets. The pellets are suitable to supply the key nutrient to plants grown in high-tech hydroponic greenhouses.
Conventional CO2 products used in horticulture are produced using natural gas and liquid CO2 so using Hot Lime Labs’ pellets will enable growers to reduce their carbon footprint.
Hot Labs chief executive Tijs Robinson said the funding would be used to get production running successfully, explore sales in Europe for exports next year, and working out how to scale up manufacturing to meet anticipated demand.
The company was established in 2017 by Dr Vlatko Materić who had spent more than a decade at Industrial Research Limited, now Callaghan Innovation, researching CO2 capture systems for thermal power plants. During this time, he developed the hot lime capture technology. The technology proved effective but there were no economic drivers to justify the costs of power plant operators installing it. Ten years later, Materić discovered there was unmet demand for clean CO2 in the greenhouse industry and converted the technology to meet that demand.
The company has developed a pilot plant with the support of a commercial grower and is now planning to scale up to commercial production.
Image: Dr Vlatko Materić with the Hot Lime Labs’ product.