NitroCapt's EIC Accelerator Plant for Fertiliser Made From Air

Nitrogen fertiliser is made mainly in the Haber-Bosch process, which NitroCapt's EIC project record says accounts for 2.7% of global fossil greenhouse gas emissions, and European production depends on imported gas. NitroCapt, a company in Uppsala, Sweden, takes a different route: it uses plasma to split nitrogen out of ordinary air and turn it into a nitrate fertiliser, with air, water and electricity as the only inputs, according to its EIC project record and its technology page.

The European Innovation Council selected the project, NITROCAPT SUNIFIX, at its 1 October 2025 cut-off for blended finance, one of 61 companies the EIC announced on 17 February 2026. CORDIS now records a grant agreement worth €2,449,125 running from 1 June 2026 to 31 May 2028. The project is five months old; what follows is what it promised and what can already be checked.

Nitrate from air and electricity

NitroCapt's SUNIFIX process works in a plasma reactor: the CORDIS objective names plasma reactor technology, electromagnetic energy coupling and heat recovery as its core, and Down to Earth describes it as using plasma to oxidise nitrogen from the air. The output is a nitrate fertiliser rather than ammonia, and the company reported in August 2024 that it had achieved continuous nitric acid production.

The claimed differences from Haber-Bosch are feedstock and scale. NitroCapt says its reactor runs at variable power and is built as modules, so production can sit near the farms it supplies, and that one 10 MW unit can fix up to about 8,000 tonnes of nitrogen a year. An earlier Swedish rural development project, which NitroCapt coordinated with Chalmers, SLU, Lantmännen and the University of Stuttgart, made the same argument; its EU project page says the process is profitable at a much smaller scale than conventional plants, and records proof of concept for each part of the process and a patent-pending reactor, but says the full process had not yet been tested as a whole.

What the EIC project promised

The CORDIS objective sets out two steps. First, a modular production unit is to be demonstrated at 600 kW at industrial level, technology readiness level 8. Then a first-of-a-kind 3 MW plant built from five 600 kW modules is to be deployed at TRL 9, as a market reference. The objective frames the market as Haber-Bosch nitrogen fertiliser, which it values at €77 billion and says accounts for 2.7% of global fossil greenhouse gas emissions; InnoEnergy's 2022 release gave 2.5%, and the rural development project page close to 2%. CORDIS lists no total project cost and names no partner.

1. Working pilotRunningUppsala pilot in operation since May 2024, per Axfood and InnoEnergy; this predates the EIC project.
2. 600 kW module at TRL 8Not yet shownNo announcement of a 600 kW unit found as of 4 November 2026.
3. 3 MW first-of-a-kind plantPlannedDue within the grant to May 2028; site not named.
4. Lower-carbon fertiliser at scaleClaimNo energy or lifecycle data published.

Buyers before the plant

NitroCapt has signed buyers before building a commercial plant. In October 2024 the Norwegian farmers' cooperative Felleskjøpet Agri signed a pre-order worth SEK 10 million, about €880,000, according to InnoEnergy and the company's news page. In March 2025 the grocer Axfood and the bakery Dafgårds announced a pilot to grow grain for about one million loaves with its fertiliser, and Novax described that as an offtake agreement when its FoodBridge unit invested the same month. The company also lists a 2024 partnership with the French cooperative group VIVESCIA and, in December 2025, an offtake agreement with the Luxembourg cooperative De Verband; no volumes are published for either.

In July 2024 the company said it held letters of intent for 15 units, and Realtid reported in March 2026 that it plans up to 34 regional plants, each supplying 50,000 to 80,000 hectares, and that about 20 would cover Sweden. Letters of intent are not orders, and the binding terms are not public.

The accounts

The summary of NitroCapt's filed accounts on hitta.se shows revenue rising from SEK 5.7 million in 2023 to SEK 13.8 million in 2024 and SEK 34.6 million in 2025, while the annual loss fell from SEK 21.6 million to SEK 2.1 million. Fixed assets grew from SEK 1.9 million to SEK 25.9 million over the same years, and staff went from 19 to 26 and back to 21. The summary does not separate fertiliser sales from other income such as grants, and the other Swedish register services checked (Allabolag, Ratsit, Merinfo, Bolagsfakta) could not be retrieved, so these figures rest on one summary of the filings. A second directory, Funnelfeedr, gives the same staff count of 21.

Outside money has come in steps. In February 2022 the company announced €2.8 million, about €1.8 million from LRF Ventures, Almi Invest GreenTech, EIT InnoEnergy, SLU Holding and others plus €1 million of grants, for a pilot that release said would be built in Germany; the pilot that later started was in Uppsala. Almi confirms a first investment in 2022 without an amount. In June 2025 NitroCapt won the $2 million Food Planet Prize, which Down to Earth reported was meant to scale the pilot. The EU project directory euacc.ai also lists a LIFE programme project, LIFE SUNIFIX, running 2023 to 2027 with €2.1 million for NitroCapt; its CORDIS page could not be retrieved, so that amount rests on the directory. No EIC Fund equity investment has been announced, and no EIC Fund portfolio page for the company was found.

Why Europe funds it

European nitrogen production depends on imported fossil gas, NitroCapt's announcement notes, and the EU has started to tax fertiliser from Russia and Belarus. Regulation (EU) 2025/1227, adopted by the Council in June 2025 according to 3tres3, has applied since 1 July 2025 and sets duties on nitrogen fertilisers that rise from €40 to €45 a tonne in 2025 and 2026 to €430 a tonne in 2028, per the Commission's trade portal. Sweden has relied entirely on imported mineral nitrogen fertiliser, according to NitroCapt, which in April 2025 called its own output the country's first domestic production in almost two decades. A process that needs only air, water and electricity, as the CORDIS objective describes it, would not depend on imported gas.

NitroCapt has not been asked for comment for this article. The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.