IN Brief:
- Murphy has used ACLA in asphalt at its One Murphy Hub depot in Golborne.
- The material is a carbon-negative aggregate used as a partial replacement in asphalt.
- The project demonstrates how lower-carbon materials are moving from trials into routine site assets.
Murphy has used carbon-negative asphalt at its One Murphy Hub depot in Golborne, deploying ACLA as part of the site’s car park construction.
The project is described as the first application of ACLA in North West England. The material has been incorporated into asphalt as a partial replacement for conventional components, reducing embodied carbon at material level while delivering a standard functional surfacing application.
ACLA has been introduced through collaboration between Huyton Asphalt, Tarmac, and Low Carbon Materials. The aggregate uses carbon removal technology to capture and permanently store carbon dioxide, creating a carbon-negative profile when produced and used in construction materials.
At Golborne, the material has been used in a practical site environment rather than kept within a controlled trial setting. Lower-carbon construction products often face difficulty moving from technical validation to normal specification because clients, contractors, insurers, and supply chains need confidence in performance, availability, installation, and accountability.
The project adds to a growing body of site-based materials work across the sector. Lower-carbon concrete has already moved into permanent structural applications, including calcined clay concrete at Brent Cross Town, where a cement replacement was used in a suspended slab. Similar work in road surfacing and infrastructure materials is pulling asphalt, concrete, binders, aggregates, and alternative raw materials into the same decarbonisation effort.
Asphalt is a significant target because surfacing is used across depots, roads, utilities, logistics yards, car parks, industrial estates, and infrastructure projects. Even small percentage improvements can become meaningful when materials are deployed across repeatable applications and large surface areas.
The commercial case for lower-carbon surfacing depends on more than carbon accounting. Contractors need assurance on laying behaviour, compaction, durability, weather sensitivity, maintenance, skid resistance where relevant, supply capacity, testing, and compatibility with existing asphalt production. Clients also need a clear evidence trail, particularly where carbon claims feed into procurement, planning, or corporate reporting.
Using ACLA on its own estate gives Murphy direct operational experience of the material. That can strengthen future project proposals because carbon-reduction measures are increasingly expected to be supported by delivery evidence rather than generic commitments. A contractor that has handled a material on its own site can assess practical issues around batching, haulage, laying, programme, and post-installation performance with greater confidence.
The wider market is moving in the same direction. Planning requirements, client net-zero strategies, public-sector procurement rules, and investor scrutiny are pushing embodied carbon into decisions that once focused mainly on capital cost and programme. Materials suppliers able to produce credible environmental product data, and contractors able to integrate new products without disrupting delivery, are likely to gain ground.
The Golborne car park is modest compared with major infrastructure carbon budgets, but repeatable substitutions in common work packages will carry a large share of construction’s decarbonisation burden. Slabs, surfacing, kerbs, drainage, fit-out boards, insulation, and temporary works all offer routes to incremental reduction. The more these materials are used in routine assets, the faster the sector can separate scalable options from products that remain too expensive, too fragile, or too difficult to specify.
