Holcim UAE and carbon-mineralisation developer 44.01 have commissioned the first live carbon capture and mineralisation pilot applied to cement production, operating at Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates. The two companies announced the commissioning jointly, marking the first time the technology has run on an active cement flue-gas stream in the region rather than in laboratory or simulated conditions.

The pilot pairs capture of CO2 from the cement plant with 44.01's core process: reacting captured carbon with rock to lock it permanently into mineral form. Unlike storage in geological reservoirs, mineralisation converts the CO2 into a solid state, removing the question of long-term leakage from the equation.

Why cement, and why mineralisation?

Cement is one of the hardest industrial streams to decarbonise. A large share of the sector's emissions comes not from fuel combustion but from the chemistry of clinker production itself, when limestone breaks down and releases CO2. That process emission cannot be eliminated by fuel switching or electrification alone.

Carbon capture is therefore the only route to deep abatement for most existing cement kilns, and what happens to the CO2 after capture — storage, utilisation, or mineralisation — determines both the cost profile and the permanence of the abatement.

Mineralisation targets the permanence question directly. The CO2 reacts with reactive rock and becomes part of the mineral structure, which means the carbon does not need monitoring the way a pressurised underground storage site does.

What the Fujairah pilot actually is

The project is a live pilot, not a commercial-scale facility. Its purpose is to prove the integrated chain — capture from a real cement plant gas stream, followed by mineralisation — under operating conditions rather than controlled ones.

For 44.01, the Fujairah commissioning represents a step beyond earlier field demonstrations of its mineralisation technology, extending it into an industrial flue-gas application for the first time in cement.

For Holcim, the trial adds a second mineralisation partner to its portfolio of capture pathways and gives the company operating data from a live plant in a jurisdiction where it runs significant cement capacity.

Who is behind it?

Holcim UAE is the local arm of Holcim, one of the world's largest cement and building-materials producers, which has committed to decarbonising its operations and has backed multiple capture pilots across its global footprint.

44.01 is a carbon-mineralisation company that has raised international investment to scale its technology of permanently converting CO2 to rock. The joint announcement frames the Fujairah pilot as a first for the cement sector.

What comes next?

The milestone that will decide what follows is performance data. A pilot of this kind succeeds or fails on capture rates from the actual flue-gas stream, the energy and material balance of the mineralisation step, and the cost per tonne of CO2 removed at pilot scale.

If the Fujairah results hold up, the next decision point is scale-up: moving from a pilot unit to a multi-thousand-tonne-per-year system bolted onto a commercial kiln. Until those numbers are published, the project remains a commissioned pilot — a real one, on a real plant, but a pilot.

The sector will be watching for two things from Holcim and 44.01: validated capture-and-mineralisation throughput figures from Fujairah, and any statement on timeline for a scaled demonstration. Either would convert this commissioning from a technology milestone into a bankable decarbonisation pathway for cement.