The Calgary startup is expanding its team and building a pilot plant near Taber, Alta.
Calgary-based cleantech company Cura has completed a $10 million ($14 million Canadian) fundraising that it says will accelerate commercial development and expand its presence near Taber, Alta.
“There are four trillion in stranded assets in this industry.”
Erin Bobicki, Kura
Cura announced the raise – its second such tranche of funding – on Thursday morning, saying BetaKit The round was led by Zacua Ventures, with additional participation from Sandpiper Ventures, Vantage Futures, Amplify Capital, University of Calgary UCEED Fund, Mount Rundle Club and Sebastian Becker. Zacua’s Juan Nieto will serve on Cura’s board of directors.
Founded in 2025, Cura develops systems to produce low-carbon cement, offsetting greenhouse gas emissions from the concrete industry, which account for approximately seven percent of global emissions. The cement that holds concrete together is most often created from limestone heated in fossil fuel-burning kilns, which can account for up to two-thirds of the emissions associated with the concrete industry. Instead, Cura uses an electrochemical process to treat the limestone, simultaneously separating CO2 from the material. The company says it can reduce emissions from cement production by 30 to 85 percent.
Capital costs
Cura plans to split its newfound capital between three main initiatives. The first is hiring several positions in the company’s engineering and business development departments. CEO and co-founder Erin Bobicki said the company currently employs 15 people, but Cura plans to increase that number to 20 by the end of the year.
“We have already started recruiting employees. We hired three [positions] lately,” Bobicki said. BetaKit in an interview. “We’re primarily hiring engineers and scientists—we have a few people we need on the electrochemical side developing our core intellectual property… We’re also looking to build out our business development teams.”
The bulk of the capital raised will go towards building Cura’s pilot plant, which is a partnership with Grand Forks Concrete, a Taber-based precast concrete manufacturer. The goal of this pilot project is to produce 100 tons of cement per year using Cura technology. Bobicki said the plant is expected to begin commissioning in the first quarter of 2027.
“They’re really eager to not just get into the pilot, but into the commercial demonstration site,” Bobicki said of the partnership.
The commercial demonstration facility Bobicki mentioned is another part of Cura’s capital expenditures.
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“Following the successful demonstration of this pilot project in 2027, we intend to move to a commercial demonstration plant with a capacity of approximately 30,000 tonnes. [of cement] per year,” Bobicki said. “A portion of this fundraising will go toward the design of this facility, which will be in approximately the same location and with the same partner.”
These projects, once completed, will help Cura both generate early revenue and provide the startup with the data needed to scale its technology to meet the needs of the broader industry, which often operates in plants producing more than one million tons of cement per year.
“Long term, we really want to sell equipment to cement manufacturers … to decarbonize their operations,” Bobicki said. “The pilot project and commercial demonstration plant are really intended to provide engineering data for full-scale plant retrofits and also to demonstrate to manufacturers… that the technology works at scale.”
These projects will be powered by solar energy from a nearby solar farm owned by Grand Forks. Bobicki said using renewable energy will allow Cura to achieve a maximum emissions reduction of about 85 percent compared to traditional cement production.
Compliance with indicators
Most traditional cement manufacturers produce the in-demand material for about $75 a ton and sell it for about $150, Bobicki said. For Cura, achieving or even reducing these numbers is key to the company’s vision of replacing traditional, high-carbon production methods.
“Our goal is that we can get our production costs below $75 a ton, without including any carbon pricing benefits,” she said. “Our technology allows cement producers to produce cement and manage their carbon emissions at the same cost they have always produced cement at, or even cheaper.”
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The company achieves this through several cost-saving techniques, including Curalyte technology, a proprietary platform that underpins the Cura electrochemical system and reduces the amount of energy required during the electrolysis process, helping to reduce energy costs and improve productivity.
“There are four trillion in stranded assets in this industry,” Bobicki said. “We are offering a modernized solution to decarbonize existing operations using the same raw materials they have, to produce a product they already have, and to use existing assets.”
BetaKit Prairies Reports partly funded by YEGAFa non-profit organization dedicated to sharing business stories in Alberta.
Image courtesy of Cura.
