Taiwan Cement Group Euro-Africa Calcined Clay Annual Production Capacity Reaches 1.5 Million Tons, Low Clinker Technology Accelerates Towards Large-Scale Production

Taiwan Cement Group, recently released a 2025 sustainable development report, disclosing the latest progress in the industrialization of calcined clay technology. At present, the total annual production capacity of calcined clay of Taiwan Cement Group in Portugal and Africa has reached 1.5 million tons; among them, the calcined clay deOHclay developed by CIMPOR has also gradually moved from material research and development to large-scale industrial production. Calcined clay product deOHclay developed

by CIMPOR

With the acceleration of carbon reduction in the global cement industry, reducing the proportion of clinker in cement has become an important technical direction. Traditional cement clinker needs to be fired at a high temperature of about 1450 C. In addition to carbon emissions from fuel use, limestone decomposition itself releases a large amount of carbon dioxide. How to replace part of clinker with other cementitious materials while maintaining the strength, durability and workability of cement is an important issue for the cement industry to reduce carbon emissions.

Calcined clay is one of the important low-carbon materials continuously invested by the international cement industry in recent years. It is a supplementary cementitious material (SCM). After calcination and activation, natural clay can replace part of high-carbon clinker in cement formulation, thus reducing the carbon footprint of products. In the past few years, the European and African cement teams of

Taiwan Cement Group have continuously promoted the industrialization of calcined clay, from Cote d'Ivoire, Cameroon to Ghana, and then to Portugal, combining technology research and development with raw material conditions in different regions, and gradually forming a low-carbon cement production layout across Europe and Africa. Among them, the Kribi plant in Cameroon uses local clay to make calcined clay by flash calcination, and produces low-carbon cement without traditional clinker kiln.

This layout also reflects the core idea of Taiwan Cement Group to develop global low-carbon building materials. Cement is a highly localized industry, with different markets having different conditions for limestone, clay, energy and alternative raw materials. Low-carbon transformation is not to copy the same cement formula to the world, but to find the lowest carbon production mode that can be achieved locally according to local resource conditions. The calcined clay deOHclay developed by CIMPOR is the concrete practice of converting local clay resources into low-carbon cement raw materials. Taiwan Cement Group has incorporated deOHclay into the "Total Climate Portfolio Climate Resilient Products" layout of

the CIMPOR Cote d'Ivoire plant

, and continues to study how to further reduce the proportion of clinker in cement. In the cement formulation, LC3 (Limestone Calcined Clay Cement) is an important technical path for the further application of calcined clay in low-clinker cement, which can reduce the proportion of clinker to 50% and achieve about 40% carbon reduction benefits while maintaining the mechanical properties of the product.

From the research and development of deOHclay technology, to the landing in Africa, the expansion in Europe, and the production capacity of 1.5 million tons, calcined clay is gradually becoming an important part of the global low-carbon cement layout of Taiwan Cement Group from a material innovation. For the cement industry, carbon reduction technology should not only be proved to be "done" in the laboratory, but also be able to enter the factory, stabilize production and enter the market.