Holcim held a ceremony launching a new calcined clay production line in the Czech Republic this week. Around the same time LeadIT (the Leadership Group for Industry Transition) published a report on calcined clay kiln projects around the world using its second quarter 2026 data from its Green Cement Technology Tracker. It must be time for an update on calcined clay!
Various dignitaries attended the launch event on 3 September 2026, including Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš. The new production line has a capacity of 0.58Mt/yr. This will supply products in the group’s ECOPlanet low-carbon cement range. Holcim says that the €40m project is the largest investment in the history of Holcim Czech Republic, with around €13.5m granted by the Modernization Fund of the Ministry of the Environment. Hence the politicians turned up for the photo opportunity.
LeadIT’s handily timed report revealed that six calcined clay projects were planned to be commissioned in 2026, including the one in the Czech Republic. The others are at PPC’s West Riebeek plant in South Africa, a new Ciments de Côte d’Ivoire (CIMCI) plant in Ivory Coast, CIMAF’s Ouagadougou plant in Burkina Faso, CIMAF’s Bobo-Dioulasso plant in Burkina Faso and Cimpor’s Souselas plant in Portugal. Commissioning is expected for most of these by the end of 2026. However, progress on the two CIMAF projects is more uncertain. In addition to these, LeadIT has also identified five calcined clay projects that have been delayed and another five that have no announced commissioning date. Its research has 14 projects currently in the pipeline with an investment of US$405m and a calcined clay production capacity of 3.3Mt/yr. Despite the large number of new projects on the way, LeadIT says it is difficult to forecast the pipeline of new projects due to a drop in new announcements in 2025 and 2026.
Graph 1: Commercial scale calcined clay projects under development by planned commissioning year and project status. Source: LeadIT report Clinker-free cement: calcined clay paves a path to cement decarbonization, September 2026.
As mentioned last time Global Cement Weekly covered calcined clay, equipment suppliers have taken note of the nascent market. For example, Aumund Fördertechnik launched its electrified Linear Calcination Conveyor in late 2025. Denmark-based CemGreen is marketing its CemTower calcination technology. Both of these developments have been covered in Global Cement Magazine in more detail. Raw materials suppliers are also circling this space. Brick and building materials manufacturer Forterra, for example, noted in its half-year report in July 2026 that it was looking to ‘utilise’ some of its surplus clay reserves for “...calcination on a much larger scale.” In mid-2025 LKAB Minerals said it was working with Forterra on using brick waste from the latter’s Kings Dyke plant. LKAB Minerals then built a calcined clay production line at Flixborough, UK, which was scheduled to start production in August 2025. Another example of this could be found in July 2026 when Green360 Technologies (G360) signed a commercial supply agreement with Holcim Australia to provide its calcined clay product. This deal is also noteworthy as Calix said earlier in the year that it was toll-processing up to 30,000t/yr for G360. Readers may be more familiar with Calix for its supply of pre-calciner technology for the Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement (LEILAC) projects.
Clay is also being looked at in other forms for use in cement production. One such approach is ThyssenKrupp Polysius’s meca-clay technology, which activates clay without calcination. In late 2025 Titan Group signed a deal with ThyssenKrupp Polysius to develop the technology. This follows work between ThyssenKrupp Polysius and Schwenk Zement that was presented at the Global FutureCem Conference 2023 in Brussels. Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies launched its technology H-CLAY for the cold-processing of clay in June 2026.
We can see that interest in calcined clay as a secondary cementitious material (SCM) in cement production continues. The announcements of new calcined clay projects may have slowed in 2025 and 2026 but a number of previously planned projects are reaching commissioning. At the same time, some companies are focusing new equipment to support this and others on supplying calcined clay as a raw material to cement producers. Then there are the projects looking at using clay without calcination. Clay usage as an SCM may not have the big-ticket prestige of expensive carbon capture projects but it is already here at scale, at lower cost, at multiple locations and delivering CO2 reductions.
