Combining complementary expertise, EXEGY and EQIOM are turning innovation into practical solutions that drive concrete decarbonization where it matters most: on the jobsite.
The decarbonization of construction will not be achieved through isolated solutions or innovations disconnected from the realities on the ground. It relies instead on close cooperation between industrial players and contractors, capable of turning R&D into concrete, safe and deployable solutions on construction sites.
This is the spirit behind the partnership between EXEGY, VINCI Construction and EQIOM, a subsidiary of the international CRH group and a leading player in construction materials, including aggregates, cement and concrete: combining joint R&D with a highly operational ambition, namely to develop and apply on VINCI Construction sites increasingly high-performance and lower-carbon concrete solutions. The objective is clear: to accelerate concrete decarbonization by leveraging both EQIOM’s industrial expertise and VINCI Construction’s field experience.
In this interview, Antoine Geoffroy, Innovation Director at CRH France / EQIOM, and Jean-Pascal Soufflet, Director of Cements and Sustainable Solutions at EQIOM, share their views on the drivers of innovation, the conditions required to scale up, and the role of industrial partnerships in making low-carbon concrete a practical reality on construction sites.
1. Innovation & R&D
EXEGY: To begin, let us return to the core of your innovation approach. How would you define innovation at EQIOM today?
Antoine Geoffroy: At EQIOM, innovation is not an end in itself; it is a means to serve an ambition: providing pragmatic solutions to our customers’ challenges. To do this, it is essential for us to remain close to our customers, to understand their challenges and identify new ideas, products and services that will bring real value to the market. In this context, we are increasingly developing partnerships that combine innovation and sustainable performance, such as the one with EXEGY. In short, we are co-building the solutions of tomorrow. Or, to echo our purpose: reinventing the way we build the world.
EXEGY: In this spirit of operational innovation, what are the main levers EQIOM is investing in today to advance concrete and binders?
Jean-Pascal Soufflet: In this area, we are focusing our efforts on three major priorities:
- Reducing the carbon footprint of our cements: we are working on new, less emission-intensive and less energy-intensive processes in our plants.
To make this as concrete as possible, here are three examples, one for each of our plants: the new production line at our EQIOM cement plant in Lumbres represents an investment of €315 million, with €39 million in support from France through France 2030 / NextGenerationEU. The result: 20% less CO2 per tone of cement, twice lower water requirements, and an ambition of zero fossil fuels. The kiln is also compatible with oxycombustion, paving the way for carbon capture. At our Rochefort-sur-Nenon cement plant, we inaugurated a new waste recovery facility in 2025: fewer fossil fuels, less CO2. Finally, at our Héming cement plant, we modernized our cement mill: less clinker, less CO2.
- Formulations: we are working on new formulations and on optimizing alternatives to clinker, such as slag or limestone, as well as more innovative materials at the heart of our R&D. Our Ultra R range already illustrates this approach.
- Alternative binders: we are exploring various solutions in this area, including geopolymers and other innovative hydraulic binders. This is a long-term but essential undertaking.
To accelerate progress on these topics, we are studying the creation in France of a European-scale R&D center dedicated to lower-carbon binders. And if our parent company believes we are best placed to host such a project, it is thanks to the expertise of our teams, built on several decades of laboratory and industrial innovation.
EXEGY: You emphasise the importance of field reality. What role do contractors concretely play in shaping your R&D programmes?
AG: Contractors play an absolutely central role. They are our best sensors for understanding our customers’ needs, from design through to delivery of the built asset. They confront us with site constraints: pace of work, implementation conditions, durability requirements and project owners’ expectations. Without this field feedback, we would risk developing technically sound solutions on paper that are insufficiently connected to reality. Our partnership with EXEGY illustrates this philosophy: it creates spaces for collaboration between industrial players and contractors, where we work as partners in the same transformation, rather than merely within a customer-supplier relationship. In this way, we go further, faster and with greater impact to support the ecological transition.
EXEGY: Concrete decarbonisation is now a central challenge for the entire industry. Among the solutions currently available, which levers seem to you the most effective and the most immediately actionable?
JPS: There is no single miracle solution to decarbonise concrete. We need to find the right combinations of levers. In the short term, from 2025 to 2030, the most effective levers appear to be reducing the carbon footprint of each tonne of cement, optimising formulations, and using lower-carbon materials wherever relevant. In the medium to long term, from 2030 to 2050, other levers will need to grow in importance, including carbon capture, utilisation and storage to address the unavoidable emissions from clinker, and the development of alternative binders, which must go hand in hand with the transformation of construction methods and close collaboration with contractors.
Let us be clear: none of these levers will be sufficient on its own. Capturing CO2 only makes sense once the full potential of all other levers has been reached. And among these levers, some can only work through long-term partnerships between all players in the construction value chain.
EXEGY: This transition also requires finding the right balance between carbon performance, technical performance and economic reality. How does EQIOM arbitrate between these three dimensions?
AG: Balancing decarbonization, technical characteristics and cost is undoubtedly the greatest challenge. Our role is to understand the needs of our different customer segments in order to find the right point of balance and develop a range that meets these different needs. We believe there is not one single balance, but appropriate, sometimes tailor-made solutions for each customer, each project and each geography.
The carbon-economic equation must be solved as a whole at the level of the structure, not at the level of each cubic meter of concrete purchased. Not all concretes in a structure require the same level of performance. It is therefore important to use the right concrete in the right place in order to optimize the equation and address site constraints, such as stripping times needed to maintain productivity. For several years, we have developed solutions such as DigiBéton to enable our customers to manage their carbon budget with the same precision as a financial budget.
EXEGY: At EXEGY, we share the same observation: innovation only truly makes sense when it can be tested in the field, then standardised and deployed at industrial scale. From this perspective, what barriers do you identify today to moving low-carbon solutions from experimentation to mass adoption?
JPS: Yes, there are several. The main barriers we identify are risk aversion, as construction is by nature a cautious sector; changes in site practices and the associated skills required for lower-carbon materials; and economic acceptability, as lower-carbon solutions are still too often perceived as an additional cost rather than an investment. But we also see encouraging signals: France’s RE2020 regulation, European objectives and the growing commitment of project owners. The regulatory and societal context is now moving in the right direction. It is up to us, industrial players and contractors, to provide the support needed to accelerate change.
