CEMEX INNOVATION HOLDING AG

Their core work

CEMEX Innovation Holding is the Swiss-based R&D and innovation arm of CEMEX, one of the world's largest building materials companies. They focus on decarbonizing cement, lime, and concrete production through carbon capture technologies, energy-efficient kiln processes, and CO2 utilization pathways. Their H2020 involvement centers on testing and demonstrating industrial-scale solutions for reducing emissions in heavy industry — from membrane-based CO2 capture to microwave-assisted firing and supercritical CO2 power cycles. They bring real cement plant infrastructure and operational expertise to research consortia as a major end-user of these technologies.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their early H2020 period (2018–2019), CEMEX Innovation focused on upstream process improvements: membrane-based CO2 capture, microwave firing for kilns, and energy efficiency in cement and ceramic production. From 2020 onward, their focus shifted decisively toward large-scale demonstration and system integration — LEILAC2 is a demonstration-scale carbon capture plant, CO2OLHEAT demonstrates waste heat recovery, and DIGIECOQUARRY signals a new digital sustainability direction for their aggregates business. The trajectory is clear: from lab-scale capture research toward industrial deployment and diversification into digital extractive industry solutions.

CEMEX Innovation is moving from participating in capture research to hosting and demonstrating full-scale decarbonization solutions, while branching into digital sustainability for their aggregates and mining operations.

How they like to work

CEMEX Innovation never coordinates H2020 projects — they consistently join as a participant or third party, which fits their role as an industrial end-user providing real-world testing environments for technologies developed by research partners. With 113 unique partners across 25 countries, they operate in large Innovation Action consortia (5 of 6 projects are IAs), suggesting they prefer application-oriented projects with many partners rather than small exploratory teams. Their value to consortia is access to actual cement plants and industrial processes for validation and demonstration.

Extensive European network spanning 113 unique partners across 25 countries, reflecting their participation in large demonstration-oriented consortia. Their Swiss base and global CEMEX footprint give them connections across Western and Southern Europe's heavy industry research landscape.

What sets them apart

As the innovation arm of a global cement giant, CEMEX Innovation offers something most research partners cannot: direct access to operational cement plants, kilns, and aggregates quarries for technology validation at industrial scale. They are not a technology developer but a technology adopter and demonstration host, making them an ideal end-user partner for any consortium that needs to prove a decarbonization technology works outside the lab. Few organizations in H2020 combine this scale of industrial infrastructure with active engagement in carbon capture, process efficiency, and digital mining research.

Highlights from their portfolio

• LEILAC2
  Demonstration-scale project for direct separation carbon capture in lime and cement — represents the most ambitious industrial decarbonization effort in their portfolio.
• DESTINY
  Largest funded project (EUR 304,354) exploring microwave firing across cement, ceramic, and steel industries — a cross-sector energy efficiency technology with broad industrial applicability.
• eCOCO2
  Bridges carbon capture with CO2-to-fuel conversion using electrochemical reactors, connecting cement decarbonization to the aviation fuel value chain.