UK: Supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) supplier CemBlend and clay producer Hepworth Clay have launched a calcined clay product called HepCem. The partnership will make the SCM commercially available to cement and concrete producers in the UK at scale, as well as supplying bespoke blends of the material. It has been accredited by the Construction Products Certification (CPC) scheme, confirming conformity with the standard BS 8615-1:2019+A1:2026.
CemBlend director Simon Boulter said, "We’re all about identifying innovative materials and developing the blended solutions that can bring them into mainstream construction.” He continued, "HepCem is a great example of British manufacturing innovation. It has enormous potential to help reduce carbon emissions, provide an alternative to increasingly constrained supplies of traditional SCMs and strengthen UK construction supply chains.”
HepCem’s promoters say that it can also be incorporated into ternary and quaternary blended systems alongside other constituents, including limestone, ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) and pulverised fuel ash (PFA). This flexibility opens up a wide range of potential applications, including precast and structural concrete, infrastructure projects, mass concrete and other lower-clinker systems. HepCem can also be added separately at the batching plant and used in cement-combination routes under BS 8500, including CEM II/A-Q, CEM II/B-Q and calcined-clay/limestone combinations, subject to the relevant specification requirements.
Daniel Hannappel, CEO of Hepworth Clay, said: “It’s a material engineered from purpose-selected clay under carefully controlled conditions, so producers can rely on consistent quality and predictable performance in every batch.”
CemBlend sells a portfolio of lower-carbon materials and it specialises in bespoke powder blending and the development of low-carbon and clinker-free cement solutions.