Coca-Cola Chooses Climeworks to Capture CO2 to Sparkle its Valser Water

14.12.2018 15:30, Philipp Gollmer

Coca-Cola HBC AG, Switzerland’s largest bottler of non-alcoholic drinks, will use Climeworks AG’s carbon-dioxide capture technology to infuse its Valser mineral water with bubbles.

“We are excited by the chance to collaborate with a beverage industry leader as part of our overarching goal of capturing one percent of global CO2 emissions by 2025.” Climeworks co-founder and chief executive officer Jan Wurzbacher said. Zurich-based Climeworks collects, purifies and sells carbon dioxide from the air, to reduce net emission of the greenhouse gas.

The beverage industry is one of the world’s largest users of carbon dioxide. Climeworks has opened factories storing or selling the gas in Switzerland, Iceland and Italy. The collaboration offers Coca-Cola HBC, a unit of the world’s biggest fizzy drinks maker, a sustainable source of CO2 for its sparkling drinks.

“Sustainability is built into our strategic business priorities and we are continuously looking at ways to minimize our ecological footprint in everything we do.” Nigel Davis, general manager at Coca?Cola HBC said. “We are proud to be the very first beverage company worldwide to drive the expansion of this ground-breaking technology.

Climeworks, an ETH spin-off that incorporated in 2009, was ranked among Switzerland’s TOP 100 startups from 2011 to 2014. The startup won 130,000 Swiss francs seed-financing from Venture Kick in 2010 and was part of the Venture Leaders team that visited China in 2017.

"Venturelab was instrumental in the starting phase of Climeworks – from finding our company name  to writing our first business plan." Climeworks co-founder Christoph Gebald added by email.