AN investor’s “unashamedly” capitalist scheme to buy up and rewild large swathes of land to sell carbon credits was likened to “Count Dracula running the blood transfusion service” today.

Exeter-based Oxygen Conservation aims to sell two million tonnes of carbon credits at well above normal market rates by appealing to billionaires’ social conscience.

Chief executive Rich Stockdale’s firm has bought 13 estates in under four years and plans to quintuple its current landholding of 50,000 acres by 2031.

On a tour of Oxygen’s estate at Dorback, in the Cairngorms, he told the Guardian that the company is creating a new market for “premium” carbon credits and “applying a capitalist model, unashamedly and proudly.”

He likened his firm’s approach to the Brad Pitt movie Moneyball, in which a baseball team used performance data to build a winning side.

Campaigners and experts in natural capital warned Oxygen’s rapid growth is based on significant levels of borrowing and speculative bets on the future value of its investments.

Community Land Scotland campaign group’s policy director Josh Doble described it as the most bullish of a new generation of “mega lairds” accumulating extensive land-holdings.

The firm’s profit-driven approach “raised questions about the long-term commitment to restoring nature, rather than treating land as another investible commodity,” he added.

“If absentee investor landowners own large parts of rural Britain, they must engage with the fact that owning land comes with responsibility.

“If you have a risky model, you need to be very careful because you’re not just making risky decisions in a boardroom, you’re playing with people’s lives.”

Communist Party general secretary Robert Griffiths warned: “This sounds a little like Count Dracula running the blood transfusion service.

“As we’ve seen with loft insulation programmes and carbon emission trading schemes, green objectives are buried by cowboys and speculators whose only aim is to make a quick profit.”

Oxygen’s biggest investors include billionaire statistician Mark Dixon, the self-styled ethical bank Triodos and Tony Bloom, a gambling billionaire who owns Brighton and Hove Albion FC.

The latest accounts for its parent company, Oxygen House Group, which is also the majority shareholder in Low Carbon, show the firm has two large bank loans totalling £106m to be repaid by 2033.