Seratech attends The UK Concrete Show 2024 to discuss breakthrough technology in the cement industry

Last week, Seratech CEO, Sam Draper, attended The UK Concrete Show where he spoke on a ‘Celebrating Innovation’ panel about Seratech transforming CO2 into sustainable cement.

Sam was joined by other panellists including Ian Riley (CEO, World Cement Association), Paul O’Hanlon (Global R&D Project Manager, Holcim) and Dr Andy Smith (Head of Materials Development, Forterra PLC) to discuss suitable routes for new low emission cement technologies to scale up to the point of market adoption in the UK and Europe.

As Sam noted, one barrier to uptake for new technologies is an overarching resistance to change within the industry: “The climate impact of cement and concrete has only recently been publicised and pressure from government and the public to decarbonise them is nowhere near as intense as in the fossil fuel industry, for example”. He adds that other industries such as airlines and transportation - which people interact with in a far more obvious way – are often highlighted even though they produce less CO2 globally.

What this means is that despite there being plenty of new low carbon cement technology in development, there is little incentive for the industry to accelerate its route to market solely on the grounds of emissions reduction. Sam points out that the challenge faced by innovators like Seratech “is to make sure the technology tightly fits the parameters required by all stakeholder in the concrete value chain, so that it can also offer benefits in terms of performance, material availability or cost. These are the key drivers of innovation, and this will remain the case until there is a significant shift in government policy”.