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They’ve done it! Best wishes are due to the Heidelberg Materials Norcem Brevik cement plant and everyone else involved. Today it has officially inaugurated its carbon capture and storage unit. The world’s first full-scale carbon capture facility in the cement industry is live.

The launch of the Longship project has been a two-day affair in Norway hosted by the Norwegian Ministry of Energy, Heidelberg Materials, Northern Lights and other stakeholders. Tuesday 17 June 2025 saw assorted speakers across government and industry, including Heidelberg Materials’ CEO Dominik von Achten, talk about net zero, carbon capture, CO₂ markets and more at the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet in Oslo. Then the event moved to the Brevik cement plant, today on Wednesday 18 June 2025, to inaugurate the project led by HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway. Our editorial director Robert McCaffrey has been in attendance and a full write-up will be available in the September 2025 issue of Global Cement Magazine.

Completing the CCS project at Brevik is undeniably a major achievement. Heidelberg Materials in Norway started seriously thinking about carbon capture in the 2000s and then tested four different potential carbon capture technologies at Brevik in the 2010s. A feasibility study, concept study and a FEED study followed for the use of an amine technology approach. A full-scale capture unit on one of the plant’s two production lines was then approved for funding partly by the Norwegian government in late 2020. Technically this is a gross simplification because the project team at Brevik have worked through the technical challenges of connecting a cement production environment to a petrochemical one. 400,00t/yr of CO₂ has started to be captured at Brevik and transported by ship, as part of the Northern Lights project, for sequestration under the North Sea. Heidelberg Materials then intends to sell a net-zero cement product via carbon capture around Europe called EvoZero using a carbon accounting system to manage it. When Global Cement asked about plans for EvoZero, Von Achten said production of the product is fully sold-out for 2025. “Customers are not the issue,” said von Achten. “Property developers and architects are leading the discussion on the use of EvoZero.” The age of commercially-available cement made using carbon capture has begun.

The Norwegian government estimates that the entire Longship project will cost around Euro2.6bn with Euro1.8bn attributable to the state. The original white paper proposed to the Norwegian parliament estimated that the Norcem project would cost just under Euro400m for construction and 10-years of operation. 84% of this would be paid for by state aid. Northern Lights, the CO₂ transport and storage part of Longship, had an estimated cost of Euro1.2bn, with 73% of this funding attributable to the state. Heidelberg Materials acknowledged the scale of the government grant funding it received in its 2024 financial report. It received Euro110m in government grants in 2024 with Euro77m for the Brevik project and a further Euro21m for a carbon capture, utilisation and storage project in Edmonton, Canada.

As discussed recently in Global Cement Weekly in response to the US government cutting funding for cement carbon capture projects, net zero is a deeply political issue because governments either have to pay for it directly, set-up incentives such as carbon taxes to encourage society to pay for it or ignore it and cope with the consequences. European policy is encouraging these projects so far. However, this is not necessarily the case elsewhere in the world. And governments can change their minds. The rough figures shown above about the cost of Brevik’s carbon capture unit and the costs of moving the CO₂ onwards show how expensive this is.

From here it’s all about building experience on how running an industrial-scale carbon capture operation actually works in the cement sector year in, year out. This will be an exercise across multiple disciplines including engineering, the logistics of CO₂ transportation and sequestration, dealing with state-level partners on a long-term basis and more besides. Many more cement sector carbon capture projects are following in Europe. They will all be eager to learn from the first one in Norway, from both the good and the bad. We will leave the last word to Von Achten from today’s inauguration, "Personally I love the collaboration part of it because this is a masterpiece of national, European, in fact, global collaboration… These days this is important."

Belgium: Cembureau, the European Cement Association, has elected Jon Morrish as its president and José Antonio Cabrera as its vice president. They will serve in the positions for a two-year term.

Morrish has been the CEO for Heidelberg Materials in Europe since 2024 and a member of its managing board. He joined Hanson in 1999 and became a member of the group’s managing board in 2016. He was the head of the North America Group area until early 2020 and then took on responsibility for the Western and Southern Europe Group. He holds an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Leeds and a master’s of business administration (MBA) qualification from the Cranfield School of Management.

Antonio Cabrera is the president of Cemex Europe, Middle East & Africa. He joined Cemex in 2000. Notable positions include president for Cemex in Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Haiti, Vice President of Strategic Planning for Cemex in the Asia, Middle East and Africa region. He started his professional career at Cemex in cement operations. He holds a undergraduate degree in physics from La Laguna University in Spain and an MBA from the IE Business School.

Tunisia: The Ministry of Industry, Mines, and Energy has announced that Souheil Arfaoui has been appointed as the CEO of Ciments de Bizerte, according to the La Presse de Tunisie newspaper. He previously worked as Administrative and Financial Director at the Agency for the Promotion of Industry and Innovation. The government is the majority owner of the cement producer.

Morocco: LafargeHolcim Maroc has appointed Amine Mnaouer as a production manager.

Mnaouer has worked for the subsidiary of Holcim and its associated companies since 2014. He started as an Electrical Maintenance Manager for Holcim Morocco in 2014 and became a Raw Mills & Kilns Manager in 2018. He later became Cement Plant Maintenance and Capex Manager in 2022. Prior to working for Holcim, he was an Electrical & Automation Engineer for wood panel producer Cema Bois de l’Atlas. He holds a master’s degree in engineering from the Henri Poincaré University in France and a doctorate in industrial digital transformation from the Mohamed First University in Morocco.

Sweden: Alcemy has appointed Alejandro Espejel Garcia as its Head of Sales - Cement Business Line. He previously worked as a Business Development Manager for the Germany-based artificial intelligence software company.

Espejel Garcia worked for Denmark-based FLSmidth from 2012 to 2024. He started as a Senior Reliability Specialist for the equipment supplier notably becoming Country Manager and Head of Mining Sales - Mexico in 2018 and Managing Director for FLSmidth Panama at around the same time. He subsequently was appointed as Vice President - Head of Group Digital’s Smart Service in 2021 and Vice President - Head of ERP Transformation in 2023. Before working for FLSmidth he held various roles with Cemex from 2004 to 2011 ending his tenure as a Regional Technical Manager in Mexico. He holds an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey and a master’s of business administration qualification from the Copenhagen Business School .

Norway: Heidelberg Materials CEO Dominik von Achten and Crown Prince Haakon of Norway have inaugurated the new carbon capture and storage (CCS) unit at the Brevik cement plant. The event was attended by 320 guests, inxluding Norwegian energy minister Terje Aasland. Von Achten said the producer’s ‘zero-CO₂’ cement, evoZero, is fully sold out for 2025. The Brevik CCS unit will capture 400,000t/yr of CO₂, equivalent to 50% of the plant's emissions. The first CO₂ has already been successfully captured, liquefied and temporarily stored, with injection into subsea reservoirs scheduled for August 2025. 

Von Achten said “Personally, I love the collaboration part of it because this is a masterpiece of global, national, European, in fact, global collaboration. Without the Norwegian government support we would probably not alone have a part in this project. The Norwegian government has significantly de-risked the project for us. That's why we are standing here today and celebrating this important milestone.”

He added “We can’t expect governments to finance these projects for the coming decades – it must work commercially. We have a physical product from Brevik that we will be delivering to Oslo and to other parts of Norway. We also have a virtual product, which will be like a purchase of a renewable energy contract, so that we can virtually allocate evoZero to Paris, to Berlin, to wherever it is needed.”

Von Achten said “The CO₂ concentration in our flue gas – at 20% – is much higher than in the atmosphere, so we have a huge technology and commercial advantage over direct air capture (DAC) approaches. I would say that our evoZero product brings significant commercial advantages to our customers.”

Yara International CEO Svein Tore Holsether said “There will be no green transition with red numbers.”

Energy minister Terje Aasland said Norway has been safely sequestering CO₂ in the Sleipner oil-field since 1996 and that storage is safe and permanent.

Poland/Germany: Cemex will expand its renewable energy portfolio in its Central Europe Materials division by adding new photovoltaic farms at its cement plants in Mysłowice, Warsaw, Lublin, Szczecin, Gdańsk and at the Mirowo quarry, under an agreement with EDP Energia Polska. The company currently operates five photovoltaic farms in the region, four in Germany and one in Pruszków near Warsaw. Nine new farms in Poland will take total photovoltaic capacity above 14MW. Existing installations produce 128MW/month; this will rise to 291MWh/month once the new farms become operational.

Cemex has also signed an eight-year power purchase agreement with Norwegian energy company Statkraft to supply its Polish operations with wind and photovoltaic electricity, covering 30% of Cemex Polska’s energy demand.

Denmark: FLSmidth has entered into a share purchase agreement with Nrep and AG Gruppen to sell its subsidiary Matr. No 2055 A/S, which owns the land and buildings at Vigerslev Allé 77 in Valby, Copenhagen. The company has been based at the Valby site since 1899, with the current buildings built in 1956. In 2022, FLSmidth announced plans to relocate its headquarters to a news site in Havneholmen, Copenhagen in late 2025.

FLSmidth expects net cash proceeds of approximately US$112m upon the closing of the transaction, scheduled for the end of the first quarter of 2026, subject to approval by the Danish Consumer and Competition Authority.

India: The Karatoya cement plant in Rajganj, West Bengal, will suspend operations for two months following the termination of its commercial agreement with a business partner, according to The Siliguri Times. The closure affects around 80 permanent and temporary workers, who staged a protest outside the plant. The company had reportedly been producing cement under contract for a ‘reputed’ cement brand for several years. The plant initially operated independently before transitioning to contract production.

Tapan Dey, president of workers organisation INTTUC Jalpaiguri district, said that plant management must provide at least two months of financial support to affected workers and that the matter would be raised with the Jalpaiguri Deputy Labour Commissioner.

Kyrgyzstan: President Sadyr Japarov has launched a new 0.8Mt/yr clinker production line at the Kant Cement plant. The project created over 300 new jobs and is expected to increase cement supply to the domestic construction industry. Construction of the dry-process line began in early 2024, with equipment supplied by China's Beijing Triumph International Engineering, a subsidiary of Sinoma. US$50m of the US$61m total investment was provided by the Eurasian Development Bank. In 2024, the plant produced 1.15Mt of cement.

President Japarov said “The launch of the new line is not just another production facility. It is a symbol of our industrial growth, professionalism of domestic engineers and workers, and, most importantly, the trust of investors in our country.”