A new agreement between Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) and Captura means that MOL has purchased 30,000 carbon removal credits, which will be provided before the end of 2030 by one of Captura’s first commercial DOC facilities. This makes MOL the first company to have signed a large-volume offtake agreement allowing them to use Captura’s Direct Ocean Capture (DOC) technology to permanently remove CO2 from the atmosphere, which will support MOL’s 2050 net-zero target.

Through adding innovations in electrochemistry to the natural carbon removal capability found in the world’s oceans, Captura’s DOC technology provides an efficient and highly scalable form of carbon removal. The method allows the ocean to absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere by extracting a measurable stream of CO2 from the seawater. Demonstrations of this technology have already occurred, and now design work for Captura’s first commercial facility, which is expected to capture 30,000-50,000 tonnes of CO2 every year, is being conducted.

Along with the carbon credit purchase, a Memorandum of Understanding has been created for MOL and Captura to enter a strategic partnership, which will be used for deploying commercial DOC plants.

Tomoaki Ichida, CEO of MOL Switch, commented, “At MOL, we are dedicated to advancing innovative decarbonization solutions that align with our sustainability goals. DOC technology offers a cost-effective and durable approach to carbon removal, and we are excited to collaborate with Captura—both by purchasing high-quality carbon credits to support our net-zero efforts and by strategically investing and partnering to help scale and deploy this high-potential technology. We see this as a crucial step in our sustainability journey and a significant business opportunity in the rapidly growing carbon removal market.”

Steve Oldham, CEO of Captura, mentioned, “Our go-to-market strategy has always focused on proving that our technology can scale sustainably and affordably before bringing it to market. We’ve achieved this through a diligent pilot and scale-up program, successfully increasing capacity by a factor of 1,000 while meeting all key performance indicators. With the successful operations of our 1000-ton pilot, we have validated the readiness of our technology for large-scale deployment and are now actively securing offtake agreements for commercial facilities. This partnership and first offtake agreement with MOL marks a major milestone in bringing our technology to market. We are excited to collaborate with MOL as we rapidly advance towards commercial deployment and expand access to high-quality carbon removal solutions.”