Zschimmer & Schwarz and Viridi have entered into a Joint Development Agreement (JDA) to accelerate the scale-up and market adoption of Viridi’s carbon dioxide utilisation technology for producing surfactants, with a stated focus on cleaning agent formulations.
The agreement, announced from Lahnstein and Southampton on February 12th 2026, links a global chemical specialties supplier with a deep-tech start-up that is positioning captured CO2 as a renewable carbon feedstock for chemical manufacturing. Zschimmer & Schwarz said it has already conducted extensive trials of Viridi’s approach and identified multiple potential applications and use cases, which the companies now intend to progress under the JDA.
Viridi’s core claim is straightforward, even if execution rarely is: replace fossil-derived carbon inputs with captured carbon dioxide, and you move at least one step closer to defossilising segments of chemical production. In surfactants, that matters because these molecules sit everywhere — detergents, industrial cleaners, personal care, and a long tail of formulated products — and their sustainability profile is under persistent scrutiny from brand owners, regulators, and procurement teams trying to reduce scope 3 emissions without rewriting performance specifications.
For Zschimmer & Schwarz, the commercial logic is also pragmatic. Surfactants are high-volume chemistries where incremental improvements in raw material sustainability, process efficiency, or supply resilience can translate into meaningful competitive advantage. The company said further adoption of Viridi’s technology is intended to enhance both product sustainability and production efficiency, signalling that this is not being framed as a pure decarbonisation gesture.
Dr. Daniel Stewart, CEO of Viridi, said: “This agreement represents a big milestone in our mission to help the chemical manufacturing industry, and ultimately, society to recycle CO2 and eventually defossilize. We are delighted to share this journey with Zschimmer & Schwarz, a company with such a pioneering mindset,”
The JDA language points to the real challenge: scale-up and adoption. CO2 utilisation technologies often look persuasive in lab and pilot settings, then collide with the industrial realities of feedstock conditioning, catalyst lifetime, energy intensity, product consistency, and unit economics that do not politely improve on demand. The companies have not disclosed technical details of the process route, target volumes, timelines, or end-market launch plans, but the emphasis on application trials suggests the partners are already mapping performance requirements against specific formulation needs.
Dr. Matthias Hofmann, Director of Global R&D of Zschimmer & Schwarz, said: “Our partnership with Viridi, a highly innovative start-up, strengthens our commitment to provide sustainable and biodegradable solutions for the future. We are excited to jointly explore opportunities for the next generation of surfactants.”
If the collaboration delivers a scalable route to drop-in surfactant performance with a materially improved carbon profile, it will land in a market that is moving from voluntary sustainability claims to measurable, auditable supply-chain changes. The next test will be whether “captured carbon” can survive the procurement conversation once price volatility, energy inputs, and qualification cycles are added to the equation.
