IN Brief:
- Reclinker has raised £10m to move its recycled cement process from industrial trials towards full commercial production.
- Recovered cement paste from demolition waste replaces conventional lime flux inside electric arc furnaces used for steel recycling.
- The company has produced thousands of tonnes at 7 Steel UK’s Cardiff site and secured its first commercial sales.
Reclinker has raised £10m in Series A funding to move its cement recycling process from industrial trials towards full commercial production, scaling a technology that uses electric arc furnaces already employed to recycle steel rather than constructing a separate conventional cement kiln.
The round was co-led by Clean Growth Fund and AP Ventures, with participation from the Development Bank of Wales, Zero Carbon Capital, Kibo Invest and Cambridge Enterprise. Reclinker plans to increase production in Cardiff before replicating the process at additional electric arc furnace sites in Europe and the US.
The technology originated at the University of Cambridge under the Cambridge Electric Cement programme and addresses cement production through an interaction between two established material streams. Concrete demolition waste provides recovered cement paste, while the steel industry provides both the furnace and a process requirement that the recovered material can fulfil.
When old concrete is processed for recycling, aggregate and reinforcing steel can be separated from the cementitious fraction that originally bound the material together. Reclinker recovers that used cement paste and prepares it for use in an electric arc furnace rather than treating it solely as low-value demolition residue.
Steel recycling in an electric arc furnace normally uses lime as a flux. The flux reacts with impurities during steelmaking and forms a molten slag above the steel bath.
Research carried out at Cambridge established that recovered cement paste has a suitable chemical composition to perform this role while also being reactivated by the high temperature furnace environment. The material can therefore contribute to steel refining before leaving the furnace as part of a mineral-rich slag.
After the recycled steel has been tapped from the furnace, the resulting slag can be cooled and processed into clinker suitable for new cement. The furnace is therefore carrying out two material functions during the same operating cycle: recycling scrap steel and reactivating the mineral components needed for cement production.
The route removes several stages associated with conventional clinker manufacture. Reclinker’s process does not require a dedicated cement kiln, quarried limestone or separate fossil-fuel heating for clinker production because the thermal process is integrated with steel recycling infrastructure that is already operating.
The company says its current product can reduce cement emissions by around 50% at cost parity with conventional material. Those remain company performance claims rather than guarantees for every future installation, and actual carbon intensity will depend on feedstock preparation, transport, furnace electricity and final cement formulation.
The underlying mechanism has progressed beyond laboratory scale. Reclinker says it has produced thousands of tonnes through multiple trials at 7 Steel UK’s Cardiff plant and has secured its first commercial sales.
Earlier industrial runs demonstrated production measured in hundreds of tonnes within a 24-hour electric arc furnace campaign. Scaling at an existing steel site is central to the commercial model because the process seeks to use capital equipment already needed for scrap recycling.
Rather than building a new kiln beside every source of demolition material, recovered cement paste can be fed into electric arc furnace operations where steelmaking already requires flux and high temperature treatment.
The approach also intersects with a changing source of lower carbon cementitious materials. Ground granulated blast furnace slag has long been used to reduce Portland cement content in concrete, but its availability is linked to blast furnace iron production.
As steelmaking transitions towards electric arc furnaces in several markets, the supply of blast furnace slag is expected to tighten. Reclinker is positioning its recycled clinker partly against that emerging gap, using demolition concrete as feedstock while relying on the electric arc furnace route that is replacing conventional blast furnaces.
Commercial deployment still creates practical constraints. Demolition concrete has to be processed so usable cement paste can be separated from aggregate and contaminants, while transporting large volumes of dense waste material over long distances would erode both cost and carbon advantages.
Deployment therefore depends on coordinating demolition feedstock, processing capacity, steel plants and cement users geographically as well as technically. Reclinker’s Cardiff work with 7 Steel UK provides one model, combining an operational electric arc furnace with surrounding construction and demolition material flows.
The £10m round will fund the transition from repeated industrial trials towards sustained production. The company has also been included in an Innovate UK Advance Market Commitment through which major concrete users have signalled future demand for lower carbon material.
Industrial trials have already demonstrated that recovered cement can pass through an electric arc furnace at meaningful scale. Commercialisation now depends on proving that the feedstock can be recovered consistently, processed economically and integrated with normal steel production while delivering repeatable cement volumes.
