Etex and Heidelberg Materials have announced a cooperation aimed at bringing the recycling of fiber cement waste to an industrial scale. The two companies want to establish a closed material loop – an undertaking that is increasingly important given growing regulatory requirements for circular economy in the construction sector.
Fiber cement consists mainly of cement, mineral fillers, and fibers for reinforcement. To date, production waste and demolition material have mostly ended up in landfills or been thermally recovered. The partnership aims to systematically capture these material streams and return the materials to the production cycle. Etex produces fiber cement products for facades and roofs, while Heidelberg Materials, as one of the world's leading building materials manufacturers, covers cement production.
The technical challenge lies in processing the returned material. Fiber cement waste must be crushed, sorted, and processed so that it can be used as recycled building material or alternative fuel in cement plants. The fibers must be separated from the mineral content, which requires additional processing steps and investments in plant technology. Additionally, there is the question of logistics: how can waste from demolition and production, occurring in a decentralized manner, be collected and transported cost-effectively?
Economically, the initiative faces the task of offsetting the additional costs of processing through savings in primary raw materials and disposal fees. Similar approaches in the field of insulation materials, such as the XPS recycling plant from Austrotherm, show that circular solutions are technically feasible but require significant initial investments and stable material streams.
For the cement industry, the recovery of fiber cement return material could be another building block for reducing the CO₂ footprint – comparable to the use of alternative fuels and clinker substitutes, which are already in use at Holcim Dotternhausen. Whether the model can be scaled depends on the availability and quality of input materials as well as on regulatory frameworks that promote or mandate the use of secondary raw materials.
The partnership signals that the construction industry is increasingly turning to closed material loops. Success will be measured by whether the cooperation goes beyond pilot projects and establishes a reproducible industrial model.
