Vertoro Closes €17 Million Series B to Scale Plant-Based Waste to Renewable Oil Technology

Vertoro, a renewable oil company, has announced the first closing of a €17 million Series B round comprising €10 million in newly contributed capital and €7 million in converted loan notes, led by Climate Tech Partners, Invest-NL and Maersk with further contributions from Energietransitiefonds Rotterdam, LIOF, SHIFT and Chemelot Ventures. The funding will scale Vertoro's technology that converts plant-based waste into a flexible renewable oil deployable across multiple end markets including chemicals, maritime shipping and sustainable aviation fuel, with the company operating a demonstration plant and preparing for commercial deployment through a licensing model. Climate Tech Partners' contribution is backed by the Airbus-Qantas Sustainable Aviation Fuel partnership established in 2022, providing an aviation sector demand signal alongside the Maersk participation that reflects maritime shipping's decarbonisation interest in drop-in renewable fuels.

 

The Technology and Its Structural Cost Advantages

 

Vertoro's process operates at low pressure and temperature without catalysts, a structurally simpler approach than conventional biofuel technologies that the company says is designed to deliver structurally lower capital and operating costs. This process simplicity, combined with a modular plant design, positions Vertoro as a potential cost leader in the emerging bio-based fuels and chemicals market where capital efficiency is a critical determinant of commercial viability at scale. The absence of catalysts and the low-pressure, low-temperature operating conditions reduce both the initial capital investment required for plant construction and the ongoing operating expenses associated with catalyst replacement and high-energy processing, creating a cost structure that could enable commercial competitiveness at smaller production scales than conventional biofuel technologies require.

The company frames its technology within an energy security narrative, arguing that by enabling countries to convert locally available plant-based waste feedstocks into a domestic supply of renewable oil it can reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels at a time of heightened geopolitical risk. This energy security dimension is commercially significant for governments and industrial buyers seeking to diversify away from fossil fuel import dependence, adding a strategic supply chain resilience argument alongside the conventional carbon reduction case for renewable fuel adoption. The compatibility of Vertoro's product with existing refinery infrastructure avoids the need for entirely new supply chains and enables faster, more capital-efficient adoption across end markets.

 

Read more: Upright Launches Science-Based AI Model to Quantify Corporate Sustainability Impacts

 

The Multi-Market Commercial Strategy

 

Vertoro's initial commercial focus is on higher-value chemical applications where its renewable oil can serve as a sustainable feedstock for thermoplastics and industrial materials, providing near-term revenue while the technology scales toward larger fuel market volumes. From the chemical feedstock entry point, the same oil can be deployed as a drop-in fuel for maritime shipping, targeting near-term emissions reductions in one of the hardest-to-abate transport sectors where Maersk's investor participation provides both strategic validation and a potential offtake pathway. In parallel, Vertoro is advancing pathways to upgrade the renewable oil into sustainable aviation fuel, with the Airbus-Qantas backed Climate Tech Partners investment and Julien Manhes, Airbus Head of Sustainable Aviation Fuel and Carbon Dioxide Removal, providing explicit aviation sector endorsement.

Manhes said SAF has the potential to reduce aviation emissions by up to 80 percent on a through-life basis and that renewable energy companies like Vertoro are helping make this a reality while addressing the need to fast-track fuel security by bringing production closer to the source of feedstocks. Dirk den Ouden, incoming Chief Executive Officer of Vertoro, said the company is building a bridge between sustainable biomass and the global fuel system, arguing that by creating a renewable oil that can serve multiple industries from chemicals to shipping to aviation the company can scale faster and deliver meaningful emissions reductions sooner than single-application technologies. This multi-market strategy provides revenue diversification that reduces the commercial risk of dependence on any single end market while enabling the company to capture value from the full range of applications its renewable oil supports.

 

Partnership with Raizén and Licensing Model

 

Vertoro's partnership with Raizén, the world's largest sugarcane ethanol producer, provides access to one of the most established and largest-scale agricultural waste feedstock streams globally, positioning the company to deploy its technology at the scale of operations where sugarcane processing generates substantial lignocellulosic residues suitable for conversion to renewable oil. The licensing model through which Vertoro plans commercial deployment allows the company to scale its technology footprint without the capital requirements of owning and operating multiple large-scale production facilities, collecting licensing revenues while partners provide site development capital. This asset-light scaling model is well suited to a technology company with a portfolio of multiple patent families that can generate royalty income from licensees across different geographies and feedstock types.

The combination of demonstration plant validation, Raizén partnership and the licensing model approach provides a credible commercial pathway that Series B investors can evaluate against concrete operational milestones rather than purely speculative future potential. The ongoing demonstration plant operation producing material for customer testing and trials while the company refines efficiency and scalability provides the industrial validation data that licensing partners and future large-scale facility developers will require before committing capital to commercial deployments. This evidence-based approach to technology commercialisation reduces the technical risk perceived by potential licensees and accelerates the trust-building process needed for a licensing model to generate substantial revenue.

 

Explore OneStop ESG Marketplace: Sustainable fuels

 

Outlook for Plant-Based Waste to Renewable Oil

 

The Vertoro Series B arrives at a moment when the market for low-carbon fuels and sustainable chemical feedstocks is expanding rapidly across aviation, maritime shipping and industrial materials, driven by regulatory mandates, corporate decarbonisation commitments and energy security concerns. Whether Vertoro can successfully transition from demonstration plant to commercial licensing agreements with sufficient scale and pace to justify the Series B investment will depend on the performance of the demonstration plant in validating cost and efficiency projections, the depth of commercial interest from potential licensees and the development of the Raizén partnership into commercial production volumes. Sustained progress on all three fronts would establish Vertoro as a meaningful contributor to the bio-based fuels and chemicals market and demonstrate the commercial viability of its low-pressure, catalyst-free conversion approach at industrial scale.