We design, build and operate biochar projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. We take operating and delivery risk and invest alongside our partners.
Three situations we work with. If you recognise yours, the next step is a conversation, not a commitment.
Shells, husks, cobs and other processing residues that pile up in volume each season.
Every season the residues arrive faster than they leave. They take up space, absorb handling cost and often end up dumped or burned. That same material can carry a second income: biochar for soils, process energy where the design allows it, and a share of carbon revenue where a project qualifies.
Sawdust and offcuts that cost money to store, move or burn.
A mill produces residue every working day, and most of it leaves the gate as cost: stockpiles, transport or open burning. Woody residue is dry, dense and well suited to pyrolysis, which makes it a waste stream with a product route of its own and, in the right project design, verified carbon removal.
Cleared and invasive biomass that has to go somewhere, in places transport rarely reaches.
Clearing and conservation work produces biomass nobody plans to keep, often far from any facility. Instead of moving the material, the processing can be brought to it. The cleared biomass gains a productive use, the work creates local operating roles, and a carbon route can support the objective the programme already holds.
Most offers in this market hand you equipment, access to a platform or a consulting report, and leave the operating risk with you. We develop biochar assets and run them, with partners, for the long term.
A biochar project begins with the material and the operating context.
No two projects are the same. We look at feedstock volume, seasonality, moisture, existing uses, access, logistics, safeguards and demand before proposing a model. That first assessment decides whether a project can run reliably and whether it is worth taking forward.
Ownership, financing, operating responsibility and revenue are agreed before anything is built.
In some projects we buy the biomass and own the asset. In others we develop and operate the project jointly with the biomass owner. A plant is a significant investment, so the same agreement fixes how it is financed and how revenue is shared. All of it is contracted before capital is committed. Where it strengthens the project, we bring in corporate demand through Njila Carbon, our route for corporates that source from the region to co-develop the project. That can add demand certainty and a further financing route.
We specify and develop the configuration that fits the biomass and the site.
We are technology and OEM agnostic, because the configuration has to follow the project, not the other way around. Where a project calls for deeper engineering, we draw on our technology partners and R&D network rather than force a standard answer. The result may be an industrial plant, a distributed model or a decision not to proceed.
Every asset we build runs under our operating responsibility.
Day to day, that can be our own site team, a local operating partner we contract and manage, or your team where it is already the strongest option. The setup follows the situation, while responsibility for throughput, product quality and verified carbon removal stays with us.
Which shape fits follows from the biomass, the volumes, the site and the logistics we assess.
A stationary plant where biomass is concentrated: a mill, a processing facility, an estate or an aggregation hub.
A dedicated modular plant typically starts at roughly 3,000 tonnes of dry feedstock per year and scales up through larger module configurations. The systems are stationary or semi-stationary, running as modular batch or continuous processes. Predictable quality and traceability come with the format, and where the design allows it, process heat can be used on site.
Mobile and small-scale units brought to the biomass where transport is constrained or undesirable.
A semi-mobile configuration of 5–10 reactors typically handles around 750–1,600 tonnes of feedstock per year, and individual kilns are materially smaller and can run seasonally. The processing moves to the material, either as modular reactor arrays or as authorised low-tech kiln networks where safeguards and carbon-standard requirements allow. The main advantage is that biomass and invasives no longer need to be moved.
Our operating focus is Sub-Saharan Africa. From time to time we take on projects elsewhere in the Global South.
Status: Registered operating project
Circular Carbon Pathways is the exclusive carbon credit partner for this registered multi-site Artisan Pro / Kon-Tiki network biochar project. The project is operated by PyroCCS India and local implementation partners.
View the project in the Global C-Sink Registry
Status: Project development in progress
A concentrated-biomass biochar project being developed around groundnut shells near Lusaka. The shells accumulate at the processing operation of an established Zambian agribusiness whose value chain is built on smallholder farmers, so the feedstock is secured at its source.
The next project starts as a conversation about biomass, a site and an operating context.
Start a conversationA project starts with the feedstock and the operating conditions. Everything else follows: the technology, the product route and the carbon finance. Biochar itself is a physical product with real uses. Under the right project design, it also stores carbon durably.
Carbon finance is part of a project, not the reason it exists. A working biochar asset can create a carbon-finance route, but the route has to be built. The biomass must be eligible, production and end use must be documented, and the project must meet the monitoring and verification requirements of a recognised carbon standard. Only then can verified removals be issued and sold, and only where a buyer or an offtake is already in place.
Carbon revenue is usually only part of a project’s income, often in the region of a quarter, alongside biochar sales and any energy or co-product streams. It can strengthen a viable project or add a financing route. It does not replace the need for reliable feedstock, sound operations and a real market for the product.
A project runs for years. Here is who you would be working with.
Byron Truscott grew up in Zambia. Chemistry took him from Rhodes University to a PhD at St Andrews, then through ten years working on industrial catalysis and emission-control processes in the UK and Austria, latterly leading an R&D team. He left industry to work on climate directly. CCP is where that experience goes to work: the process and pyrolysis chemistry that decides whether a plant runs reliably, applied where he grew up. His time is now split between Austria and Zambia.
Hannes Weiland is the commercial half of CCP: the partnerships, the financing routes and the carbon commercialization that turn a working plant into a working business. He started at a carbon removal startup in Canada, years before the industry had a market, and came back to it through a master's programme where he met Byron. In between he founded and built companies, including a medical device venture. That kind of product and production teaches what complex, physical assets demand. He grew up near Munich and is at home on both sides of the Atlantic.
Both reached the same conclusion: the technology for carbon removal already exists. What is missing are people willing to finance it, build it and stay with it for the years a project takes to deliver.
Tell us about the biomass, site and operating context. We will review the situation before proposing a next step.