6th Global FutureCem Conference on cement industry decarbonisation
21 - 22 January 2026 - Munich, Germany

Dr Johann Plank was the first speaker at the conference, concentrating on SCMs in the Chinese cement industry. He forecast that the industry will reduce its production over 1bnt of cement today to 600Mt/yr by 2030, in the face of plunging cement demand. Natural clays are not permitted for LC3 production, so that by-product clay-containing materials must be used, including red mud, a by-product of aluminium production. Coal gangue, a by-product of coal production, fly ash, and coal gasification slag (itself alone 70Mt/yr) are all materials produced in large quantities by the Chinese coal industry, and which can be used as SCMs after processing. Steel slags, including granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS), basic oxygen furnace (Linz-Donawitz) BOF slag, and electric arc furnace (EAF) slag all have their advantages and disadvantages. Lithium slag derived from ore refining is becoming more common in China, and is used to replace flyash in blended cements, albeit with high resultant water demand. Phosphogypsum is also used by the cement industry as a setting regulator. Professor Plank mentioned the use of superplasticiser additives to reduce water demand, to increase slump performance and to increase early strength. He pointed out that China, India and Vietnam are the world’s largest cement producers, and it is these industries that must be strongly decarbonised to make a significant impact on global cement industry carbon emissions. However, he concluded that carbon capture is not expected to be significant in the Chinese cement industry.
 
John Kline of Kline Consulting (who gave a well-received short course on cement industry decarbonisation the previous day), told delegates about the use of SCMs in the US, in a talk entitled ‘From scarcity to glut.’ He pointed out that a number of slag grinding plants are being commissioned, mainly in the south and east of the US. Fly ash production is steadily reducing as coal fired power is steadily phased out. However, fly ash harvesting is rapidly increasing: around 2bnt of coal ash has been landfilled so far, so that there is a huge resource that is available to upcycle the ash into a cement substitute. Bottom ash grinding plants (for landfilled and fresh ash) are currently being built and commissioned. Natural pozzolan plants are growing fast, particularly in the west, from 6 in 2014, to 25 in 2026, with cement companies and independents very active, and with many other mines and projects in operation or under consideration. Clay calcination has started in the US, with Titan and Vicat projects going ahead, but many DOE grants have been withdrawn and progress seems to have stalled. Other SCM plants are also proceeding, including recycled glass, biomass ash, recycled concrete fines and synthetic SCMs. CRH purchased Eco-Materials and Geofortis, to give it a strong base in SCMs, while HM has purchased SEFA and Walan, and Amrize is working hard in ash harvesting. Over 20Mt of SCMs were consumed in the US in 2024 - and there is more than enough supply for domestic consumption.
 
Joost Oostra next spoke about a project to set up a clinker grinding plant near Bogotá, Colombia, for Fortcem. The cost of importing the clinker was exorbitant, US$130/t, so the plant soon cast about for SCMs. Broken bricks, slaked lime and flyash were all used, at up to 10% substitution, but the materials handling situation at the grinding plant became complicated very quickly. Instead, an off-site receiving, grinding and homogenisation facility was organised, which sent only a single ‘cementitious mix’ to the plant. This worked much better, and the facility was soon receiving tiles and bricks, flyash, lime, off-grade glass, acid slags, sand and cement mud from concrete plants, ungranulated slag from old steel plants, calcium carbonate-sulfate sludge from salt refining processes and even some hazardous wastes. Joost pointed out that broken ceramic floor tiles are essentially calcined and activated clay with 30-50% amorphous content: perfect for the grinding plant, but not more than 300t/month. Then it transpired that there was a landfill with 60 years’ worth of broken tiles in it, 300,000t, which was then processed and used at the grinding plant: environmental  awards were received. After three years, the grinding plant was using 45% clinker, and 53% SCMs, primarily ceramic tiles, with very few road-miles. Chemical additives were a critical success factor. “Achieving market acceptance was not easy, but we did it. That’s a story for another day.” His global lessons were these: Always look for opportunities; Be humble - the chicken eats its dinner grain-by-grain; Go slowly, set-by-step; Organise your logistics so that you can cope with many small lots; Sell your project as an environmental recovery programme - a small volume for the waste producer might be a big headache for them, but it may be a small amount and no trouble for the grinding plant (everyone wins); Respect the stoichiometry, have a good chemist and laboratory, maximise clinker reactivity and use those chemical additives!
 
Veronica Schwarz of Orcan Energy next spoke about the use of the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) for waste heat recovery (WHR) and reduction of Scope 2 emissions. Orcan has modularised and standardised the equipment required for use with small to large heat sources, while retaining scalability. Veronica gave details of a number of WHR case studies in the cement industry, including  in Europe where the very high price of electricity now makes WHR return on investment relatively fast.
 
Saad Kisra of SLB (formerly Schlumberger) next spoke about an holistic approach to cement industry decarbonisation. “Without CCUS, deep decarbonisation of the cement industry will be virtually impossible,” he stated. Brevik was the first large cement plant to commission a CCS project, while Padeswood in Wales will be the first to capture all of its CO2 emissions, starting in 2029. SLB has done a global analysis to find the cement plants that are most advantageous for CCS, using eligibility criteria including reservoir availability, size and quality, injectivity, containment, and also non-technical criteria such as monitoring possibilities, transport, legal issues, public opinion and economics. Geological data quality is crucial. Saad gave the example of a cement plant in Algeria, where 2D and 3D seismic data was already available from past oil and gas exploration. Machine learning is increasingly being used for seismic interpretation of potential reservoirs. Saad suggested that sequestration in sandstone-hosted saline reservoirs is increasingly being considered, and that these are very widespread, effectively ‘democratising’ the possibility of sequestration.
 
Nicolas David, DALOG, discussed how his company can help decarbonise the cement industry whilst helping cement producers to remain competitive. DALOG monitors over 2000 machines in more than 80 countries with its headquarters in Germany and subsidiaries in Colombia and India. He then emphasised that DALOG does more than vibration monitoring and gave multiple examples of this. David gave the example of DALOG helping Votorantim Cement North America over several years by targeting critical machines at five plants first, holding regular meetings with the customer to recover performance and then extending the monitoring coverage to over 1000 components using wireless connections. DALOG has now started its Mission Zero Downtime initiative by broadening its links with industrial equipment partners including Aumund.

Alexandra Graf, Promecon, explained how her company’s products can measure gas flow at multiple sites on a cement production line. The McOn Air system uses two probes to measure the velocity of electrically charged particles by cross-correlation and the triboelectric effect. She said it measures absolute velocity and provides direct measurement values without any K-factor conversion at up to 1000°C, with a velocity range of 3 - 100 m/s and a dust concentration of up to 3000g/m³. At higher temperatures the company offers an infrared product that can cope up to 1200°C with a non-intrusive method. After presenting installation examples at cement plants, Graf said that the biggest benefit of having gas flow data is to become aware of the process.

Carlos Jácome, University of Siegen, presented data from his research into deposit formation at oxyfuel cement plants. The altered chemistry in oxyfuels kilns makes the formation of Spurrite (C5S2) more likely than in conventional kilns. His laboratory-scale investigations found that this formation is heavily dependent on CO2 concentration, temperature and chlorine concentration. The research also tested dynamic build-up formation by a stirrer test. Under these conditions the spurrite started to decompose towards 1000°C, in agreement with thermodynamic models. Ongoing research is looking at using additives to block spurrite formation by the direct or indirect immobilisation of chlorine.

Reiner Bachthaler, Axians, spoke about how his company digitises logistics workflow. It has been in the cement industry for 25 years and also covers the sand and gravel, asphalt, lime, landfill, recycling and ready-mix concrete sectors. He described how processes such as order-taking, self check-in and check-out, bag and bulk loading, yard management, plant security, material flow management, plant exit and safety training can all be improved and made more efficient through central logistics processes, mobile applications and by integrating information technology with operational technology.

Alexandre Bogas, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, revealed how his research team has developed a new proprietary method of concrete waste separation to create a cement paste and a high-quality recycled sand. He wouldn’t describe the patented process in detail but confirmed to the audience that it involved a mechanical comminution stage and a high-intensity magnetic separation process. He then went on to detail the properties of the recycled cement. It has a high rehydration and binding capacity, comparable compressive strength in concrete with up to 40% recycled cement and can be used as an alternative material in stabilising earthen materials such as compressed earth blocks.

Global CemFuels Awards

At the end of the first day of the conference, delegates gathered at the Bavarian hostelry the Münchner Stubn for the Global FutureCem Awards Dinner. Holcim was presented with the award for Decarbonisation Company of the Year, Fuller Technologies was presented with the award for process optimisation technology for decarbonisation, and ci-tec GmbH won for process control technology for decarbonisation. TITAN won the award for decarbonisation project of the year for the Fiddler’s Ferry ash plant and evoZero Carbon Captured (Heidelberg Materials) was presented with the Global FutureCem Award for decarbonised cement product of the Year. Çimsa Çimento won the award for decarbonisation innovation of the year for its Rapidome 3D printed house. Two gentlemen who have made great contributions to cement industry decarbonisation were awarded Global FutureCem Personality of the Year awards: John Kline of Kline Consulting; and Professor Johann Plank of the Technical University of Munich.

Conference second day

On the second day of the conference, Lisa Scullion of the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre at the University of Manchester spoke about the use of graphene in concrete. Low-dosage graphene increases compressive strength, particularly at early stages of hydration. Flexural strength is also increased, with less shrinkage observed and reduced cracking. Graphene provides a large surface area and many nucleation sites, causing densification and a lower proportion of pore space, reducing water ingress. Over the last few years, reproducibility of the product and dispersion techniques have improved, while the cost of graphene has fallen as producers have proliferated and tonnages have increased. Lisa pointed out that the addition of graphene to concrete will allow a lower dosage of cement, reducing the overall carbon footprint of the end product, with increased durability.

 
Jemal Kedir Adem of KIGAM-UST Daejeon, South Korea, next spoke about the phase evolution and strength development of OPC pastes modified with low-lime calcium silicate cements (CSC) under carbonation curing. These calcium silicate cements have lower processing temperatures and use less limestone, leading to CO2 emissions of 0.4-0.6t/t of cementitious. CSC may also be blended with OPC to optimise mix properties, including water demand, early strength and final compressive strength. With increased CSC content, microstructural densification increased, leading to higher earlier strengths.
 
Hania Miraki, a PhD candidate at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, working with Heidelberg Materials, spoke about optimisation of low-Portland clinker hybrid binders. Hania pointed out that the chemistries of clinker, SCMs and alkali additives are all different and proceed in their own way, but at the same time influence each other as the reactions proceed. They are typically competing for scare calcium ions, but Hania suggested that other alkalis such as sodium may substitute: optimising the alkali activator content can maximise the binder strength. However, reactions remain governed by normal clinker hydration.
 
During the first of four presentations dealing with AI’s contribution to decarbonisation, Hubert Keller, ci-tec GmbH, explained how his company has developed a machine learning method of correlating infrared clinker bed temperatures against laboratory-tested free lime measurements to create a model that estimates free lime content in a cement kiln every 10 minutes. This potentially allows operators to optimise kiln management since they can predict free lime content faster than laboratory sampling. An audience question noted the variable time delay it can take for clinker free lime to be tested and how this might affect the model.

Ali Camgoz, ÇIMSA, delivered a wide-ranging overview of how his company has introduced AI into its operations. The cement producer started by pooling data from multiple sources into a so-called ‘data lake.’ It then built a content management system to monitor the data and analyse it. It moved on to building digital twins of production lines, processing 10TB of operational data from over 23,000 sensors. Camgoz then detailed individual projects including optimising setpoints in advanced process control systems and using camera-based systems in a variety of settings such as raw material analysis.

Alper Yildirim, Innomotics, talked about AI-based digitalisation projects focusing on pyroprocess control in kilns. Firstly, Innomotics conducts exploratory data analysis to identify where their software can help the most. It then moves on to data assessment and system setup. Then the company starts with prediction and recommendations, moves to digital simulation and progresses on to open and closed loop operation. Yildirim noted that the company continuously updates its simulated digital twins. The company’s product targets alternative fuel substitution rates, fuel efficiency, quality consistency and decarbonisation targets.

Lisa Oberaigner of Emidat explained how the European Union’s Construction Products Regulation (CPR) will see the transition from Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) to the Digital Product Passport (DPP) system as it rolls out to 2032. Product groups will be harmonised as part of this process, to unify standards across the region, with pre-cast concrete already complete and cement to follow in the early stages. The new data required for a DPP expands EPDs particularly into marking, stakeholder mapping, verification, data publication and Building Information Modelling (BIM) linkage. Oberaigner argued that gathering all this new data has advantages for companies, such as sales, product development and compliance.

Amith Kalathingal, Holcim, reviewed how his team approaches calcined clay projects on a case-by-case basis. First, a clay source is identified. Then, calcination technologies are considered, industrial trials are conducted, the local product portfolio is considered and a business case is considered before full investment and eventual completion. He illustrated this through the company’s references in Europe and Latin America, with a total investment of over Euro100m. Methods of clay calcination, products made, bag or bulk distribution and application vary considerably. Notably, Kalathingal detailed Holcim’s patented ‘baby kiln’ method of calcining clay that is being used at its Saint-Pierre-la-Cour plant in France.

Kiranmai Sanagavarapu, Fuller Technologies, called on cement producers to prepare for a future where they could only use 50% clinker. She reflected that existing standards permit flexibility, that the shift from CEM II to CEM IV products is contingent on producers, that each plant has different equipment and markets, and that cement composition is becoming a strategic choice. Cement plants typically respond to this situation by building new equipment, if they have funding, or optimising existing equipment if they do not. Sanagavarapu then detailed Fuller’s involvement with the DETOCS project, to help cement plants use more supplementary cementitious materials (SCM), and development work with its OK Mill product to target clinker grinding up to 8000 blaine (cm²/g) to support higher SCM substitution without performance loss.
 
The penultimate paper at the conference was given by Özge Demirdogan, on behalf of a temporarily-voiceless Berrak Avicioglu of Çimsa. Mecanochemical activation is a process of particle size reduction that achieves properties beyond those expected from just comminution. In experiments using Turkish trass or pumaceous tuff, longer grinding times lead to higher proportions of amorphous phase amounts. These led to earlier setting times and higher long-term strengths in mortar cubes. Longer grinding led to slight agglomeration and recrystallisation and some diminution in performance. Finding the ‘sweet spot’ of optimal grinding size will be critical to maximising performance and cost.
 
Nikolai Velten of Aumund Fördertechnik GmgH gave the final presentation at the conference, on the electrified Linear Calcination Conveyor (ELCC) for clay calcination, developed in conjunction with Holcim. The industrial-toaster-like device uses electrical elements above a conveyor line, surrounded by an insulated enclosure, with all conveying elements outside the hot zone. A cascade of eLCCs can be used for homogenisation, or mid-device mixers can be incorporated. Due to the small volume of the chamber being heated, heat losses are very modest and so the energy consumption is very low, even compared to flash calciners, rotary kilns or electromechanical activation. Nikolai suggested that just two wind-powered generators would be needed to power a 20t/hr eLCC, and that 100t/hr installations are possible. Colour control can also be achieved, to avoid the formation of red calcined clay, either by using water sprays or heat exchangers.

Prizes and farewells

After the conclusion of the presentation programme and a final audience discussion session, delegates gathered together for the last time to say their farewells and to discover who had been voted as the best presenters. In third place was Veronica Schwarz of Orcan Energy for her paper on WHR, and in second place was Hania Miraki, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology/Heidelberg Materials for her paper on low-Portland clinker hybrid binders. However, in first place - and marking a first-ever female clean sweep of the top prizes – was Lisa Oberaigner of Emidat for her paper on the transition from EPDs to DPPs.

Delegates strongly praised the conference for its collegiate, friendly atmosphere, for its slick organisation, and for the exceptional quality of the presentations, discussion and networking.

The 7th Global FutureCem Conference will take place in Brussels in March 2027.
 

Delegate comments from FutureCem 2026 in Munich

• First time here and I would come back :)
• Always great to be here.
• Impressed with time keeping
• Very well organised conference, a good place to know about the new trend on decarbonisation
• The event was very well organised, with high-quality presentations and a friendly, professional atmosphere that made it enjoyable and worthwhile to attend.
• As a PhD student, this meeting gave me valuable exposure to industry perspectives, including the challenges they face and their key interests. It will also help me better align and refine my future research plans.
• Very nice focused event
• Thoroughly enjoyable and valuable event for the industry.
• Congratulations
• Enjoyable time
• Unconventional ideas for increasing the networking
• So good. I will definitely come again
• Really enjoyed attending the Futurecem conference. The talks were inspiring and full of fresh ideas, and I loved getting the chance to connect with so many passionate people in the field. It was not just informative, but also energising and full of networking opportunities.
• People had great willingness to share experiences and knowledge
• Good job, wish you the best in upcoming events
• I think the number of participants was perfect! A lot of interesting people, but not too many so you actually have the chance to talk to everyone you want to talk to.
• You organise great networking sessions
• Great people, organisation and input
• Well organised, all friendly people, great audience and organisers
• Excelled by opportunity to network without being overwhelmed by a crowd of suppliers trying to sell you something.
• It was really well organised and well guided.
• I didn't expect to meet such a wide variety of people, in different areas of the industry from so many different countries. I have made valuable contacts.
• Thanks for the organisation!