Bouygues Construction, a leading global construction company, and Ecocem, Europe’s independent leader in low-carbon cement technologies, have signed a global innovation partnership involving ACT, Ecocem’s scalable low-carbon cement technology.
This partnership marks a pivotal step in their shared commitment to significantly reducing the carbon footprint of construction projects.
Following thorough laboratory and rigorous full-scale testing by Bouygues Construction’s R&D and Innovation team in collaboration with Ecocem, the goal is to advocate and facilitate the use of Ecocem’s ACT cement technology in Bouygues Construction’s projects.
The partnership is focused on three key areas designed to independently test, evaluate and validate Ecocem’s ACT technology:
Commenting on the partnership:
Edward Woods, Head of R&D and Innovation at Bouygues Construction said, “At Bouygues Construction, our focus is on “Building for Life,” and essential to that is the need to address the critical imperatives of the environmental transition. We are committed to making construction sustainable and less resource intensive. Any low-carbon solution deployed by Bouygues Construction must deliver the required concrete performance, using standard working practice, and must be globally scalable and cost efficient. Together with Ecocem, we share a focus on and commitment to innovation and finding scalable solutions that drive down emissions at speed. Validating ACT technology in a variety of applications and conditions, with the ambition of incorporating it into our projects is an integral part of Bouygues Construction’s R&D and Innovation team’s remit in tandem with Bouygues Construction’s Procurement department.”
Conor O’Riain, Ecocem’s Managing Director for Europe said, “This commitment to validating Ecocem’s ACT technology by a major player like Bouygues Construction marks a decisive turning point in the decarbonization of the construction sector. This partnership will demonstrate that scalable, cost-effective solutions to drastically reduce the carbon footprint of concrete are ready for large-scale deployment.
As the construction sector accelerates its environmental transition, speed, scale and cost efficiency are what matters. This collaboration highlights the convergence of technological innovation and climate commitment and will create an immediate and measurable impact on CO2 emissions.”
Developed over nearly a decade of intensive research, ACT represents a major advancement in cement manufacturing. It enables a 70% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to the European average for cement. ACT delivers this result by maximizing the use of locally available alternative materials, known as Supplementary Cementitious Materials (SCMs), while delivering all the performance characteristics required of any concrete it is used to make – namely durability, workability and strength and cost-performance.
ACT is a propriety technology which uses a specific blend of mineral, and some chemical admixtures combined with a particular particle size distribution design. It can be produced at almost all existing cement plants without significant investment or modifications and requires no change to working practices on the job site.
Bouygues Construction’s Scale One® is an innovative facility designed to accelerate the environmental and digital transformation of the construction industry. Located in Chilly-Mazarin, near Paris, Scale One® provides a space where new construction materials, equipment, methods, and technologies can be tested under real-life conditions.
The facility features test zones, a works team, and storage facilities, allowing innovators to validate new solutions more quickly. It includes roughly 2,500 m² of testing, coworking, and creative spaces, encouraging collaboration among companies, academics, and research institutes. This initiative aims to promote rapid change in the construction industry by fostering innovation, research, and training. This project is oc-financed by the Île-de-France Region and the French government as part of the France 2030 Program.
Bouygues Construction employs 32,500 people around the world, all driven by a single ambition: building for life. In more than 50 countries, we improve daily life for millions of people by creating sustainable infrastructures and buildings that serve life and address all our needs: housing, healthcare, education, work, entertainment, mobility, contribution to low-carbon energy production, natural resources management, etc. At every stage of a project, we put all our expertise and our experience into designing, renovation and building differently so that we can meet the critical imperatives of the environmental transition and achieve construction that is sustainable and less resource-intensive. Every day, we make sure that everyone is safe, and that human rights and ethical standards are respected. Committed to strong values, the men and women of Bouygues Construction work passionately alongside their customers and partners so that our footprint becomes more positive. In 2023, Bouygues Construction generated sales of €9,8 billion.
Ecocem is a pioneer in high-performance technologies that significantly reduce CO2 emissions in the cement and construction sectors. Our mission is to build a sustainable future by leading the way with low carbon cement technology. For more than 20 years, Ecocem has been developing, manufacturing, and supplying low carbon cement and construction solutions to markets in Europe. Operating factories in France, the Netherlands, and Ireland, Ecocem produces over 2 million tons of low-carbon cement annually. To date, Ecocem has reduced CO2 emissions by over 18 million tons through projects such as the Grand Paris Express, the athletes’ village for the Paris Olympics, the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, and the HS2 high-speed rail line in the UK.
Ecocem, Europe’s leading independent producer of low-carbon cement, today announces the construction of its first production facility dedicated to ACT, its low-carbon, globally scalable cement technology, at its Dunkirk site.
The companies aim to co-develop and deploy a version of ACT, Ecocem’s scalable low-carbon cement technology, optimized for application by TITAN.