Airhive Acquires Carbyon to Form European Direct Air Capture Leader

Airhive has acquired fellow direct air capture developer Carbyon, combining the UK and Dutch companies into an Anglo-Dutch leader in solid-sorbent DAC technology as European policy support for carbon removal accelerates. The combined company will operate under the Airhive name with research and development centred at the High Tech Campus Eindhoven, where it will develop Airhive's next-generation Cascade technology. Airhive has already demonstrated a 1,000-tonne-per-year system in Alberta at a cost below $500 per tonne excluding transportation and storage, and is co-developing a planned 60,000-tonne-per-year facility at Teesside in northeast England, which would be larger than any DAC plant currently operating.

 

Two Complementary Approaches to the Same Problem

 

Both companies work on solid-sorbent direct air capture, a method that uses reactive minerals within a closed, engineered system to pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere, but they arrived at the technology from different directions. Airhive's approach adapts fluidisation technology drawn from the food and pharmaceutical industries, a manufacturing technique that suggests a path to industrial-scale deployment using processes already proven at scale elsewhere. Carbyon's method centres on a proprietary sorbent engineered for high reaction kinetics, meaning it captures carbon dioxide more efficiently per cycle, which directly affects the economics of running a DAC system continuously.

Combining execution-focused deployment capability with deeper materials science research addresses what both founders described as DAC's central challenge: reaching low costs at large operational scale requires sustained technological innovation, project execution expertise, and a supportive policy environment simultaneously, rather than any one of those in isolation. Airhive's Rory Brown framed Carbyon's research capabilities as the accelerant for Airhive's existing execution track record, while Carbyon's Hans De Neve described the combination as pairing Airhive's de-risked technology and delivery power with Carbyon's fundamental research depth.

 

Read more: Actineer Uses Sustainable Radium-226 Recycling to Scale Actinium-225 Production

 

Why the Business Model Is Shifting Away From Carbon Credits

 

One of the more consequential details in the announcement is the company's move toward carbon utilisation rather than relying primarily on carbon credit sales. Airhive is working with Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, also an investor in the company, to install a DAC system at a European bottling plant that will produce low-carbon, food-grade carbon dioxide for carbonating drinks, a commercial-scale pilot the company says could extend to other facilities.

That shift matters because voluntary carbon credit markets have proven volatile and have not always provided the steady, predictable revenue DAC developers need to justify large capital investment. Selling captured carbon dioxide directly to industrial buyers who need the gas as an input, such as beverage carbonation, offers a more conventional commercial relationship with clearer, more stable pricing than credit markets have historically delivered, and the company said it is actively exploring further utilisation opportunities beyond this pilot.

 

Explore OneStop ESG Marketplace: Carbon capture

 

The Policy Shifts Making This Consolidation Timely

 

Several regulatory developments over the past year help explain why this combination is happening now. Direct air capture became one of the first three carbon removal methodologies certified under the EU's Carbon Removal and Carbon Farming framework, giving it one of the fastest routes to certification within today's voluntary carbon markets. The European Commission also established an EU Buyers' Club to support public and private investment in DAC and other carbon dioxide removal projects based in the bloc, creating a coordinated demand mechanism rather than leaving buyers to negotiate individually.

In the UK, the government has signalled that DAC-based carbon credits will be integrated into the UK Emissions Trading Scheme in 2028-29, a change that would significantly boost demand for credits from Airhive's UK-based projects by linking them to a compliance market rather than a purely voluntary one. The UK has also been building carbon capture and storage infrastructure near Teesside and in the eastern Irish Sea, the transport and storage networks that DAC ultimately depends on to permanently store the carbon dioxide it captures, since capture alone accomplishes little without somewhere to put the gas afterward.

 

What Comes Next

 

The enlarged Airhive will continue co-developing UnionDAC, the UK consortium with Mission Zero and Progressive Energy building the 60,000-tonne Teesside facility, alongside pursuing further commercial and research partnerships across Europe and as far as Australia. Whether the combined company's cost trajectory continues toward the sub-$500-per-tonne benchmark already achieved at demonstration scale, and whether the shift toward carbon utilisation proves more commercially durable than carbon credit sales alone, will determine whether this merger produces the low-cost, large-scale DAC capacity the founders describe as necessary to meaningfully affect global emissions.

 

Source: Carbyon