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Editorial comment

Happy New Year, dear readers, and welcome to the January 2025 issue of World Cement!

It’s hard to believe that we’re already a quarter of the way through the 21st Century and looking at dates on the calendar that – to my mind, at least – rightly belong within the realms of science fiction. If you can believe it, the original Blade Runner movie was set all the way back in the distant past of 2019, and don’t even get me started on 2001: A Space Odyssey…


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Of course, not only are we rapidly making our way through this century, we are also burning through the time allocated to meet our emissions targets. We have just 5 years left to meet many of the important 2030 milestones that will be key signifiers of whether we’re on track to meet those all-important 2050 net zero goals.

Thankfully, progress in the cement industry continues apace with decarbonisation projects underway at plants around the world. It’s true that much still needs to be done, but the projects taking place today are laying the much-needed groundwork for a green cement industry of the future.

One recent example of progress being made is HERACLES signing a FEED contract with Air Liquide Engineering & Construction for the CO2 capture, liquefaction, storage & dispatch facilities of the large-scale OLYMPUS CCS project in Greece. When complete, the facility will be capable of capturing 1 million tpy of CO2 for storage in an offshore sequestration facility in the Aegean Sea.

Over in Portugal, CIMPOR has announced its intention to invest €1.4 billion in the country with the bulk being directed toward meeting the key challenge of decarbonisation via infrastructure, technology, and new products. According to the company’s new CEO, Cevat Mert “The future is energy and technology and, as long as this transformation is taking place, there will be construction, and if there is construction, there will be cement.”

Moving to Asia, Sumitomo Corporation has agreed to deploy Fortera’s bolt-on low carbon cement production technology at plants across the region. The Japanese market is planned as the initial focus, with multiple sites of interest identified. Fortera’s ‘ReCarb’ technology process converts industrial CO2 directly from cement production into performance-enhancing low carbon cement.

If you’d like to hear first-hand from leaders in the cement industry (including Holcim, Heidelberg Materials, CEMEX, TITAN, VICAT, CIMPOR, HERACLES, Mannok, and many more…) and discuss their latest decarbonisation projects, then make sure to join us in Athens, Greece, on 9 – 12 March for EnviroTech: The Gateway to Green Cement.

Featuring 3 days of high-quality presentations, informative expert-led panel discussions, a full exhibition, and multiple networking events, all situated in a five-star venue, EnviroTech offers an unmissable opportunity to take your place at the forefront of the decarbonisation discussion. Simply head over to www.worldcement.com/envirotech2025 to register today.

You can even find out more about our own decarbonisation efforts and how we’re working with sustainability partners, treeapp and TRACE by isla, to keep EnviroTech an environmentally-friendly event.


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