Avatar Leadership Fund invests in CO2Brew to explore sustainability in the brewing industry

TORONTO and CALGARY — Avatar Leadership Fund announces its first investment and role as lead investor in a $800K pre-seed funding round for CO2Brew, a Calgary-based startup that is involved in the brewing industry through attempted emissions reductions, while trying to bolster supply chain resiliency and new revenue streams. Avatar was joined by numerous Canadian angel investors in CO2Brew’s pre-seed round.

CO2Brew was spun out of the 2022 Avatar Studio, and they have been working to build a strong business and sales pipeline. They are on the pathway to commercializing their proprietary technology, an engineered CO2capture and scrubber system that will recover high purity liquid CO2 from the fermentation process and reuse it in the brewery carbonation process. By ensuring a self-sufficient supply of beverage-grade CO2, brewers will be able to offset the purchase of industrial food-grade CO2 (derived from hydrocarbons). CO2Brew sees expanded opportunities once the technology has been derisked within the brewing industry, and will expand into the winery, distillery and food processing industry, unlocking incremental revenue streams for their clients from the sale of excess CO2.

CO2Brew’s pre-seed round comes on the back of recent ecosystem success, having won the Inventures 2024 “Earth Tech: Building Everything Better” pitch competition and being named a finalist for “Venture of the Year” in Foresight Canda’s 2024 Alberta Cleantech Awards.

“We are thrilled to strengthen our partnership with Avatar,” said Kent Swanlund, CEO and co-founder of CO2Brew. “Having formed CO2Brew within Avatar’s Studio, we have benefited from Avatar’s hands-on leadership, expertise and strategic support as we bring our innovative technology to market. We are honoured to be Avatar’s fund first investment and are empowered by Avatar’s passion for decreasing industrial emissions”.

“CO2Brew is an impressive representation of the innovation that can be unlocked by working within industry to create solutions for real problems” said Bryan Trudel, Partner of Avatar’s Fund and CFO and Co-Founder of Avatar Innovations. “We are inspired by team’s passion and dedication, and thrilled to lead this transaction and fill a critical gap in the clean-tech ecosystem by providing CO2Brew with necessary early-stage risk capital to pursue their business strategy and growth.”

CO2Brew says they will use the funds from this round to build and operate its pilot with Cold Garden brewery, bring its first commercial unit to market and extend their market presence across North America. We are confident in CO2Brew’s ability to execute on its milestones and drive meaningful emissions reductions and supply chain resiliency.