Taking biochar to the bank
How our pre-purchase unlocked a £1 million commercial loan for Restord
Editor’s note: In April 2026, Terraset pre-purchased ~£165,000 (~$200,000) of carbon removal from Restord, a biochar company based in the United Kingdom, as part of our partnership with the Green Finance Institute and their CDR Catalyst. That six-figure commitment helped unlock a first-of-a-kind £1 million bank loan (6x direct follow-on funding) and a broader financing package that will see Restord move from pilot scale to its first commercial facility.
When people talk about catalytic capital, the term can feel abstract and hand-wavey. The story of Restord offers a concrete example of how strategically deploying money can unlock additional capital that would not have otherwise been possible.
From grandfather’s farm to commercial facility
Tom Previte founded Restord in 2024 on his grandfather’s farm in Cornwall. He took local tree trimmings and heated them in a low-oxygen environment to create biochar, a material that locks carbon away for centuries and helps restore soil and ecosystems. In its new life as biochar, this green waste holds onto planet-warming carbon that would otherwise return to the atmosphere through decomposition or burning. When added to soil, biochar helps retain water and nutrients, and can even improve crop yields.
The work was not glamorous. Tom used this pilot-scale operation to test feedstocks, generate early biochar, and show that wood waste could be turned into both carbon credit revenue and a usable agricultural product.
That pilot gave Restord real operational experience. Tom had run the process, identified reliable feedstock in the woody oversized material that a local green waste facility couldn’t compost, and delivered carbon credits. He started with grants and crowdfunders, but scaling the operation required a different kind of capital strategy.
Moving from pilot to commercial scale required financing for machinery, site preparation, operational capital, and a structure that could satisfy a lender in a sector most banks still see as high-risk.
The challenge of the financing gap
Restord sat in an awkward middle ground: too early, too capital-intensive, and too novel for many conventional lenders; too small to attract large institutional banks; and project financing wasn’t the right fit for venture investors. Tom spent six months speaking with lenders, with many promising routes leading to dead ends. They weren’t comfortable with a model built primarily on the future value of carbon credits, especially without a buyer confirmed.
The first part of Tom’s solution was to show that Restord wouldn’t rely on a single revenue stream. In addition to carbon credits, the project generates revenue from physical biochar sales and thermal energy, which can be converted into electricity. That diversification helped. So did the idea of structuring the loan against the pyrolysis equipment itself, with a manufacturer buyback option from Woodtek as additional protection. Woodtek also came in with a machinery discount in return for an equity position in the new project, reducing upfront costs and bringing a key equipment supplier into the deal as a committed stakeholder. But getting a deal across the line would still need more.
What it took for a bank to say yes
Restord eventually identified a serious potential lender in Oxbury, a UK agricultural bank with extensive experience financing food and farming businesses. Biochar was a more intuitive fit for them than a generalist lender. But thematic alignment alone was not enough.
Oxbury was willing to lend a substantial share of the required capital, but it didn’t want to be the only financial backer. Restord would have to assemble a broader financing package that included non-loan capital and committed project partners. Oxbury also needed evidence that the project had real customers, realistic revenue assumptions, and credible protections against downside risk.
How the capital stack came together
While all this was going on, the Green Finance Institute (GFI) – a global independent advisor to governments and investors – was bringing stakeholders together for the creation of their CDR Catalyst, which was designed to solve exactly this sort of problem. Terraset, meanwhile, had launched a revolving fund, which pre-purchases credits with philanthropic capital and resells them to corporate buyers on delivery. It quickly became apparent that the two approaches were deeply complementary. Together, the GFI and Terraset identified the role that a pre-purchase from Terraset could play in unlocking further financing to scale carbon removal in the UK.
Opportunities like this are core to our mission. We don’t think philanthropic capital will solve the climate crisis on its own, but we know from experience that it can play a catalytic role. We’ve seen our pre-purchases unlock more than 10x the funding we’ve deployed in direct financing, and seen more than 40x in follow-on investment secured within 12 months of completing a deal. The GFI thinks similarly, so working together felt both obvious and natural. This opportunity gave the chance to prove the concept in the UK for the first time, as part of a partnership that will ultimately bring many more projects like this to life.
What ultimately emerged was a layered structure, brought together under GFI’s CDR Catalyst and supported by Oxbury, Terraset, Cornwall’s The Green Waste Company and future carbon credit buyers.
The total financing requirement was slightly above £1.5 million. Tom broke it down as a set of complementary sources of capital, each solving a different problem in the financing package.
£1 million loan + £100,000 revolving facility from Oxbury Bank: The core debt financing, structured against the pyrolysis equipment. This provided the bulk of the machinery finance, with the equipment itself serving as the primary asset behind the loan.
~£165,000 pre-purchase from Terraset: Early customer capital tied to future carbon removal deliveries. This was used for the manufacturer deposit as well as planning and permitting, allowing Restord to start spending before the main loan was drawn. It also gave Oxbury more confidence that demand existed at a real contracted price.
Six-figure investment from The Green Waste Company: Partner capital invested into the project in exchange for an equity stake. These funds went toward the machine as well as civil works to prepare the site. It also strengthened the feedstock and site relationship at the center of the project.
Alongside the financing and upfront pre-purchase, Tom has been negotiating further offtake agreements for the credits Restord will produce, and Terraset has secured supplementary purchases from additional future carbon credit buyers through our revolving fund, helping round out the non-loan portion of the package.
Terraset’s role was especially catalytic because its pre-purchase solved two problems at once: it validated demand for future deliveries and supplied early cash for immediate project expenses. In Tom’s telling, that helped reduce lender risk while accelerating the project timeline.
Blended finance is underused in carbon removal
This deal offers a practical set of lessons for developers trying to finance early climate solutions. Most developers continue to chase grants or wait for commercial investment that isn’t ready yet. The Restord deal offers a third path: using early philanthropic commitments to reduce lender risk, validate demand, and help projects cross the threshold where debt becomes possible.
Tom shared candidly that when working across buyers, lenders, and developers in this way, getting everyone in the same room early matters. A buyer may want to be catalytic, but unless the structure actually addresses lender concerns, that intention may not translate into funding.
This story is also a reminder that climate impact alone is rarely enough to unlock debt. Tom said lenders cared primarily about repayment, downside protection, and the resilience of the business model. For developers, that means learning to present a climate-positive project in the language of finance without losing sight of the mission underneath it.
Restord demonstrated what’s possible when multiple parties take on part of the risk required to move a project from pilot to commercial scale. It won’t look the same everywhere. Different lenders will care about different things, but the logic still holds. Catalytic capital works best when it is tied to a specific moment or challenge in the financing stack.
How to get involved in the next catalytic opportunity.
Since completing this deal, a number of banks have asked us to team up on larger partnerships. The only barrier is the capital we have available.
Reach out at hello@terrasetclimate.org if you are:
A donor interested in giving that unlocks private capital and investment. You can give to Restord specifically here.
A carbon removal developer trying to finance early commercial infrastructure.
A funder working to scale climate solutions in the UK who wants to learn more about our expansion in the market or our partnership with the GFI on their CDR Catalyst.
We’re excited for what’s coming up.