[00:00] Ecocem has been participating in Betondag for many, many years. What we do at Ecocem is produce ground blast furnace slag, which we supply to the concrete industry in the Netherlands.
[00:12] Blast furnace slag is a byproduct of the steel industry. We grind it into a binder, a cement substitute. And, as mentioned, we supply it to the concrete industry in the Netherlands. The more ground blast furnace slag you use in your concrete mix, the lower your concrete’s carbon footprint ultimately is.
[00:28] Traditional cement, or traditional Portland cement, emits approximately 800 kilograms of CO2 per ton. Ground blast furnace slag emits only 30 kilograms of CO2 per ton. We have developed a new binder concept in-house.
[00:40] It’s called ACT. ACT. That stands for Accelerated Cement Technology. And it allows us to produce much more sustainable binder using less blast furnace slag. The main obstacle to wider adoption of our product is often simply a lack of willingness,
[00:54] but it also involves certain people rethinking their production process. If you work a lot with blast furnace slag, you have to make some adjustments to your production process; you have to start thinking differently so that you can produce a more sustainable binder. So that, ultimately, you end up with much more sustainable concrete
[01:09] bring to market. Look, our product has been used in countless projects for many, many years. Major projects include, for example, the Wilhelmina Locks near Vianen, as well as the Maastoren in Rotterdam. These are projects that use a great deal of blast furnace slag
[01:22] is used. For us, the key development for the future is the ex-binder, which will allow us to make the cement industry more sustainable much faster than was required by the Paris Agreement in 2014.
