Construction adhesive and chemical producer Mapei has officially opened a new 3,200 sq m admixture facility in Speke near Liverpool, expanding the range of products it can manufacture in the UK.
This is the company’s second manufacturing facility; the first one in Halesowen in the Midlands opened in 2005, and produces pastes and powders for ceramic tiles and flooring, screeds and grouts. Admixtures manufactured at the Speke site will include Mapei’s Dynamon, Chronos, Vibromix and Idrocrete ranges.
Mapei officially launched its new admixture facility to customers, suppliers and colleagues.
The event also saw the UK launch of Mapei’s CUBE admixtures system, which was unveiled in the US just over a year ago. The system has been designed to produce lower carbon concrete, for example with concrete that contains supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) such as ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) and pulverised fuel ash (PFA).
Mapei co-CEOs Veronica and Marco Squinzi were in Speke to cut the ribbon on the new facility which houses laboratories and offices alongside its warehousing and admixture mixing areas. Veronica Squinzi told attendees at the event, which included Mapei employees, customers and suppliers, that her grandfather had founded Mapei in 1937 and that her father had expanded it globally, so that today the business has a presence in 57 countries and turns over more than €4bn a year.
Marco Squinzi spoke about Mapei CUBE and of the need to rethink the way that concrete is constituted. “Maybe we need to design the concrete in a different way,” he said. “Sustainability is forcing us to change a lot of things. The real truth is that every material needs to change.”
Both the event’s guest speakers, TV architect Charlie Luxton and Aggregate Industries’ national product development manager Jasen Gauld spoke about sustainability and the need to reduce carbon emissions. Both underlined the fact that concrete is one of the big hitters when it comes to carbon emissions.
Luxton, who founded an environmentally focused architectural practice back in 2000, spoke of the economic challenges of sustainable design. “In building that business, it’s become a balancing act of economics and the environment,” he said, later commenting that accounting practices needed to change if we are to reduce carbon emissions at the rate needed to slow climate change.
Gauld highlighted the changes in concrete technology that have taken place since he started working in the industry in the late 1980s. And he pointed out that more changes are round the corner, since supplies of SCMs such as GGBS and PFA will dwindle as the industries that produce them as a byproduct become greener.
Georgio Ferrari, R&D group leader at Mapei, presented on Mapei CUBE, illustrating the tension between carbon reduction and cost. He explained that the admixture system can be used to lower the carbon footprint of concrete significantly, which would cost more for the same strength; or it can be used to lower the cost of concrete significantly, while only reducing the carbon footprint by a modest amount.
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