Innovation

Betolar’s Geoprime® is a geopolymer side stream-based solution. The side streams are slag from the steel industry, bio-based fly ash from forestry and mineral waste from mining, among others. Betolar’s Geoprime solution can be used in a wide range of products, for example, in stabilization products, in ready-mix concrete, in precast construction elements, landscaping products and column bases. Betolar has also recently developed the world’s lowest emission hollow-core slabs together with Consolis Parma.

Betolar does not have concrete production of its own, rather it provides the producers in the value chain the Geoprime binder as a service based on licensing arrangements. Betolar’s value proposition is that the customers can start producing side stream based low-carbon concrete without significant investments in research and development activities or machinery as they can utilize their own existing production processes and machinery. Also, Betolar offers both technical and marketing support for the customers. Further, to improve the global scalability and efficiency, Betolar uses artificial intelligence in the R&D process.

Inspiration

The Geoprime® innovation was created by exploring new materials with a lower carbon footprint than conventional cement, making concrete more sustainable. This all started in 2016 from the personal need of the man behind the innovation, Juha Leppänen, when he had to burn his own house due to black mold. When Leppänen was building his new house, he wanted to use materials that would have smaller impact for the environment. As he was living in Kannonkoski in Central Finland, an area with strong roots in the forest industry, he came up with the idea to replace cement with bio ash, a side stream from forest industry. After this Leppänen started to dig deeper in the research of cement-free alternatives for concrete. It turned out that these kind of geopolymers had been investigated since the 1970’s. Thus, the innovation was not new as such, but no one had been able to scale it up – and this is what Betolar is now aiming to do with Geoprime.

Overall impact

The Geoprime® innovation helps to tackle two global challenges in particular – climate change and environmental degradation. The innovation is important in reducing greenhouse gas emissions as the construction industry has a big environmental impact worldwide. Also, circular economy is highly related to this innovation as industrial waste materials can be upcycled which will reduce the use of virgin natural resources, leading to reduced biodiversity loss.

At its best, when the whole construction value chain is committed to the green transition, it is possible to make the change quickly, as Geoprime is already ready for use. A good example of this is IBF A/S, the Danish market leader in concrete manufacturing. Thanks to the Geoprime solution, IBF has succeeded in halving the carbon dioxide emissions of concrete pipes. Some scale to the impact gives the fact that IBF’s first customer of cement-free concrete pipes was Aarhus Vand A/S. It is responsible for water and wastewater management of approximately 350,000 private and corporate customers in the Aarhus area in Denmark.

A remarkable accelerator for the Geoprime innovation is the climate-related targets of public and private sector. The climate targets force construction companies to compete also with environmental parameters such as CO2 emissions beside the monetary value of the project. It is because already in tendering the construction companies need to show that they can meet the tight CO2 limits of the projects. In other words, CO2 can be a new currency beside money, and Geoprime can help construction companies to be competitive. According to KPMG Market Study and Betolar’s estimate, the global market potential of low-carbon cement solutions will be around EUR 1.5 billion in 2026.

Business benefit

As Betolar is still in the growth phase and the focus has been in research and development, the business is not profitable yet. Geoprime® solution’s commercial and industrial production was gradually started by the first customers in 2022, and it is currently used in Europe and Asia. The same year the company was awarded as a pioneer of the circular economy in the Helsinki Stock Exchange.

Geoprime’s advantages include scalability and cost-efficiency for the concrete producers, as Betolar offers the cement-free binder recipe as a service on a license basis and the customers can continue to utilize their existing production machinery and processes without any major changes and investments.

Betolar aims to accelerate the development by creating a data and service platform that brings together the entire value chain and increases Betolar’s own knowledge. The objective is that the platform will serve both as a meeting place for concrete manufacturers and industrial side stream producers, and as a digital marketplace for Geoprime and Betolar’s other solutions. Betolar has received a 7 million EUR funding from the Finnish Climate Fund for the development of the platform.

Social and environmental benefit

The total volume of cement production is estimated to amount to approximately 4 billion tonnes annually. Thus, if Geoprime®’s commercialization is successful, it is fair to anticipate that the innovation has huge potential to boost green transition in the construction industry and contribute to climate change mitigation and circular economy.

Geoprime’s CO2 emissions from raw materials are up to 80 per cent lower compared to conventional concrete. In 2022, Betolar’s customers were able to reduce their CO2 emissions by 550 tonnes by replacing traditional cement with Geoprime. By 2030, Betolar’s target is to achieve a cumulative reduction of 150 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. With these efforts Betolar and Geoprime can strongly contribute to the EU’s and country-specific aims to achieve carbon neutrality.

Because up to 95% of Geoprime’s raw materials originate from industrial side streams, it also offers an opportunity to convert previously unutilized industrial side streams into new products and thus reduce the volume of wasted resources – contrary to traditional cement production, which generates billions of tonnes of waste every year.

In addition to environmental benefits, Betolar aims to ensure social responsibility in the construction value chain. To support this, Betolar is committed to a high level of quality and safety in its operations, and the company’s operations are guided by quality, environmental and occupational health and safety standards (ISO 9001, 14001, 45001).

Interview

Melina Pinomaa, Sustainability and Investor Relations Manager

Watch video on YouTube