No room for a green premium

The world feels chaotic - war, AI, energy crises - and climate has slipped down the agenda, even as record weather events pile up. Concrete is no different. There is some progress towards decarbonisation, but with few exceptions, customers will pay exactly net zero for net zero.

That matters, because cement accounts for around 8% of global CO₂ emissions. Cutting it means there can be no green premium, so new solutions have to work economically for the whole supply chain, or they don't get used.

SCMs are the answer - but the easy ones are gone

Supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) lower the clinker in a mix, and with it the carbon. Volcanic ash, fly ash, calcined clays, slags and limestone filler all do this. That was the message from global industry expert Peter Hoddinott at Cemtech in Asia. But the catch is, high-quality SCMs are already in use. What remains is a vast supply of low-quality SCMs - locally available and cheap, yet sitting idle because they can't perform on their own.

Activating low-performing SCMs is the problem Neocrete solves

Our additive boosts the performance of low-cost, low-performance SCMs, so producers can use far more of them. The result isn't a trade-off: in real-world pours, mixes boosted by Neocrete have cut both cost per cubic metre and carbon per MPa - an average of $6 per cubic metre.

Better concrete that doesn't cost the earth, proven on the materials producers already have.

With thanks to Peter Hoddinott for helping tell this story, and International Cement Review for an excellent conference.

‍