Invisible Strength - The media site for MARKHAM - Adding Life to Concrete
Reducing carbon, one truck at a time! CarbonCure enables the concrete industry to improve operations while reducing its carbon footprint. We interview Will Pepping, Australian Manager of CarbonCure, about this exciting technology and the impact it can have in the long term. And what’s a word you don’t usually use in the same sentence as ‘concrete’?!
CE Construction Solutions – Australian distributor teamce.com.au
BRENDAN:
Hello and welcome everyone! Great to have you listening today to MARKHAM’s Invisible Strength podcast. I’m Brendan Stead, Marketing Coordinator, based in MARKHAM’s Bundaberg office; and today we are privileged to have a special guest on board, joining me virtually from Sydney: Will Pepping, Australian Manager of CarbonCure.
Hello there, Will! Let the audience hear you, and tell us a bit about yourself.
WILL: Hello Brendan. Yep 100% right, my name is Will Pepping. I’m a New Zealander, and again you’re correct, I reside in Sydney! I’ve recently started with a company called CarbonCure that’s got a big focus on sustainability and construction; very much similar mindset to MARKHAM when it comes to sustainability, which is pretty cool; and the way the construction world’s definitely going.
So I’m looking forward to having 10 or 15 minutes of your time to discuss sustainability and construction etc. It’s going to be cool.
BRENDAN: Very much appreciated! And I guess we need to put a little disclaimer here; some of you might know that Will worked for us at MARKHAM for four years, so there’s a bit of water under the bridge there.
WILL: Oh, good water!
BRENDAN: Great to see you stepping into your current role in an industry-related business. So first of all, can you tell us about CarbonCure itself? – Some background or history, and where it operates.
WILL: Yes, fantastic. So CarbonCure originated in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada. It was founded by Rob Niven who’s our current CEO – great guy – and he’s created a business with a fantastic culture. Very similar to MARKHAM’s actually, which is nice and easy for me to move into. So currently we operate worldwide with our major markets currently being in the Americas, predominately North America, and we’re currently experiencing a very fast scaling process into every other continent around the world; including Asia Pacific, which I’m involved with.
BRENDAN: Right, OK. So tell us about your own role within the CarbonCure family?
WILL: Yes, cool. So I’ve recently started; I’ve been here for a few months now. I’m the country manager for Australia and New Zealand, and then over time will be moving into Asia. So I’ve got a lot of demand in Asia at the moment, which is quite cool. A little bit hard with travel restrictions etc, but … Zoom and having access to these types of programmes, does make it pretty easy. So I currently do oversee the sales and marketing initiatives within the company. We’ve got a great team here at CarbonCure; so we do have Business Development Managers also working with myself, and a very energetic marketing department, which is pretty cool as well. So part of my role is to introduce the technology to a wide range of customers and key stakeholders are all driving the whole sustainability idea; to reduce CO2 or carbon emissions and into the atmosphere. So we’re working with the likes of tier-one asset owners; specification personnel, such as architects and engineers, and then the ready mix plants as well. We’re finally a lot of asset owner demand is increasing day by day. It’s a pretty cool story, and I use the word that it’s sexy, it’s a sexy technology, and I don’t think it’s too often you can use the words sexy and concrete in the same sentence! But it is a great story and a lot of people are very interested in it.
I’ve also been very fortunate that I do have an Australian distributor that has done a lot of work in the marketplace here for the last two or three years, which he’s already generated a fair bit of interest, which makes my job a lot easier!
BRENDAN: Fair enough!
WILL: Hope that’s enough for you!
BRENDAN: That’s good, Will, that’s excellent. Gives us some good background on it. And you mentioned earlier, the way CarbonCure and MARKHAM share something of the nature of the vision of sustainability. Can you give us a bit more depth on that, how you envision sustainability in New Zealand and Australian construction moving forward, in the context of concrete?
WILL: Yes, my feeling in the marketplace is, I’m feeling all concrete… or sustainability all through construction is growing. So the demand for sustainable building products, sustainable building ideas, is growing day by day. You have a look at all the media… so things such as LinkedIn, all the newspapers, the news at six o’clock each night, everything’s to do with… well, not everything. But there are a lot of articles about reducing carbon. Because obviously if we don’t reduce carbon, we’re going to be running into issues further down the track in the decades to come.
So I envisage all concrete to be green, or green-rated, or low carbon concrete in the next 2-3 years, probably. So a lot of the architects and engineers, they all want to jump on board. They all want to be specifying sustainable products, which is fantastic. And that demand is also being created through the asset owners. What I found with a lot of asset owners is, they’re setting themselves lofty goals to reduce their carbon footprint on a lot of their projects. I had a meeting with one earlier this week that they have a goal of reducing their carbon by 15% each year, up until 2030. So that’s going to be taking them very, very close or probably over that carbon-neutral goal of theirs, which is fantastic.
And that really fits in with what CarbonCure is trying to do. And so we’re actually trying… our mission is to reduce 500 million tonnes of CO2 emissions by 2030. And that’s equivalent to removing about 100 million cars off the road annually.
BRENDAN: It’s very impressive.
WILL: Yes that is. And, like, buildings generate nearly 40% of the annual global greenhouse gas emissions. And that’s expected to double by 2060. And that is equivalent to building New York City every single month. So there is something that is needed to be done to ensure that we have an environment in the future years that we can still operate in, and enjoy, basically.
BRENDAN: Yes. Yes indeed. Can you tell us then about the actual technology used by CarbonCure, and how it works?
WILL: Yes, certainly. CarbonCure uses captured CO2. So that captured. CO2 might be a byproduct of a manufacturing facility, for example. So we don’t actually capture it. We have a partner that captures the CO2. So basically they’re stopping the CO2 going into the atmosphere. So capturing the CO2 we have our technology installed into readymix plants. So that CO2 that’s in the tank at the readymix plant is basically pumped into your concrete mix. So into the back of your concrete truck.
It goes through a mineralisation, producing more calcium carbonate. And we all know in the concrete game that calcium carbonate’s the good stuff in concrete. And by doing that, that enables the readymix supplier to reduce their cement in their concrete mix. There’s a bit of a range, it’s around about 5% usually.
So that’s obviously a two-step, two-part process of minimising CO2. So you’ve got obviously – saving the CO2 going into the atmosphere. And then secondly you’re saving the CO2 from the cement production, by minimising that cement in the concrete mix by 5%.
BRENDAN: Very good!
WILL: And it has positive effects on important things such as compressive strength, as well. So there’s all the data available to anyone who wants and needs it in the marketplace, that backs up the claims.
BRENDAN: Yes, I see. So it’s a fair range of – what would you say – beneficiaries, real winners, from that technology.
WILL: Yes, so I think I’ve covered that. In saying that, obviously the asset owner is getting a project with a lower carbon footprint. Readymix suppliers are able to produce concrete more efficiently as well. They’re probably the two major ones. And then obviously there’s the big one; that’s the overall environment; we are having a positive effect on that, the sustainability of the environment for future generations.
I do have one pretty cool fact! Our largest project, which was for Amazon, their headquarters in Virginia over in the States. This is a 260,000 square metre, with close to 82,000 cubic metres of concrete. They use CarbonCure throughout all of that project, and saves themselves 1,144 tonnes of CO2 going into the atmosphere.
BRENDAN: Excellent! Very good!
WILL: So try to get your head around how much CO2 that is! I struggle sometimes; but it’s a phenomenal amount.
BRENDAN: Yes, absolutely. So it’s quantifiable? The asset owner, therefore, as you say, can measure how much carbon they’re saving by using the treatment.
WILL: Yes, correct. We do have calculators available for that as well, but on average per metre cubed, you’re saving between 15 and 20 kilograms of CO2 going into the atmosphere.
BRENDAN: Very good! And did you want to give us a bit more … any other real-life case studies to tell us about, Will? Have you had some in the Asia-Pacific region so far?
WILL: Well, that’s a work in progress. We’ve got several plants set up in New Zealand. We’ve got some innovators about to start using the technology in Australia as well. So watch this space!
BRENDAN: Very good!
And how can our listeners get in touch with you? What’s your preferred way of making contact?
WILL: Yes, so I’m very active on LinkedIn, so feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn; or my email address is [email protected]; or basic phone call, 0429 841 637.
BRENDAN: Excellent, Will; we really appreciate you taking the time today to share this with us. To all our listeners – of course, if you come through MARKHAM, we can direct you to Will also. And we also love to talk about your construction projects! Get in touch with us at markhamglobal.com – drop an enquiry on the contact form or Percy the chatbot.
Thanks so much, Will, I really appreciate it!
WILL: Thank you! All the best for 2022.
BRENDAN: Thank you! You too.
WILL: Bye.
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The whole MARKHAM team is pleased to present you with our podcast series, INVISIBLE STRENGTH. In this series of interviews, we’ll walk through the science and challenges of concrete durability, what goes wrong in the field – and the advanced methods available to restore and enhance service life to concrete construction.
INVISIBLE STRENGTH reflects a number of factors in concrete construction and durability. When things go wrong, the evidence can become very visible indeed. However, when all is going well, there’s nothing particular to be seen!
MARKHAM’s concrete treatments, too, are invisible once completed – and the result is the long internal, invisible durability of the concrete.
So join us as we explore the unseen world inside concrete – why it matters, and how it can be protected!
Invisible Strength – The media site for MARKHAM – Adding Life to Concrete.
At MARKHAM, we’re on a mission to transform concrete and construction. Our Purpose? ADDING LIFE TO CONCRETE.
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