Op-ed by Dr. Liz Gilligan, CEO of Material Evolution.
Two hundred years ago, a bricklayer from Leeds named Joseph Aspdin filed a patent for Portland cement. His 1824 patent helped set the foundations for a material that would go on to underpin concrete, the world’s most widely used construction material. Britain should be proud of that history, but we should also be challenged by it.
As the birthplace of Portland cement, the UK is now facing a very harsh reality. The domestic construction materials industry is shrinking quickly. The Mineral Products Association’s (MPA) latest figures show ready-mixed concrete sales down 9.3% in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, which was already a drop from the previous year. Mortar fell 5.1% and sand and gravel 8.3%.
The MPA says the sector is heading for a fifth consecutive year of declining demand, with sustained low demand placing jobs, investment and long-term manufacturing capability at risk.
At the same time, Britain is increasingly relying on imported cement, with imports accounting for 32% of total domestic cement sales in 2024, driven largely by high UK production costs. The birthplace of modern cement and construction is facing a huge challenge to its existence. But in the face of this problem, there’s also an opportunity.
Why now is the moment to lead
The instinctive response to industrial decline is usually the same – you consolidate and protect what remains and subsidise existing plants to keep operating as they do today.
But that underplays the risk of locking in the very exposure that has made domestic production less competitive, leading to high energy and production costs, while leaving the UK poorly positioned for the next phase of construction.
The market is changing and reducing carbon is becoming a routine part of how buildings and infrastructure are designed and procured. The UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard published Version 1 in March this year, with verification launched in July. This means that carbon is becoming a measurable requirement in plans and companies that can evidence low-carbon delivery will have a competitive advantage.
Demand is also being driven from the supply side: the government-backed Advance Market Commitment for next-generation low-carbon concrete is designed to further aggregate demand for products that meet defined technical and commercial criteria, with an initial ambition to secure commitments for up to 500,000 cubic metres.
These are important signals that point to a clear route for reinvention for the industry. Low-carbon materials are where the opportunity lies, and Britain can – and should – seize this opportunity to be the front-runner of this next phase of cement.
Building a hub of low-carbon excellence
The UK already has credible routes to lower-carbon materials. What we must do now is focus on creating the conditions in which they can scale. With today’s increasing demand, the ambition should be a more resilient and higher-value domestic base: one that is competitive because it produces better, sustainable materials, without requiring the industry to reinvent how concrete is produced.
The good news is that achieving this doesn’t require updating the concrete code, major cost increases or even new skills or systems. The answer can be found in the waste products the industry uses: supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs).
Manufacturers already know materials like ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBS), pulverised fly ash (PFA), and limestone powder well: where to source them, how to use them and what they can do.
For decades, concrete producers have turned to these SCMs to lower costs when OPC prices spike, with carbon reductions representing a welcome side effect rather than the main driver. But if we use more of these materials, and diversify their use, the carbon savings on offer will be too significant to ignore.
From low-carbon ambition to reality
In a recent trial with The Environment Agency and RPC Contracts, Material Evolution’s MevoXL admixture was used to boost SCM use, thereby easily reducing the embodied carbon of precast concrete blocks by 20% while increasing strength and maintaining existing production processes and material costs.
This is just a first step to show what even more significant decarbonisation could look like.
The tools already available to us in the UK offer a clear path to significantly reducing carbon emissions, while simultaneously bolstering the businesses at the forefront of low-carbon solutions.
In the past, Britain didn’t establish its place in the cement industry by standing still. Aspdin’s patent was an act of invention and commercial ambition, and the lesson for today is not to recreate the past, but to repeat that willingness to lead.
We can choose whether to watch domestic cement and concrete production continue to decline, then import more of the material we once invented. Or we can use this moment of pressure to build a new competitive advantage: low-carbon cement made, certified and scaled at home, for markets here and around the world.
We have the products, we have the expertise and we have the beginnings of the market architecture. What we need now is the ambition to make Britain the market leader.
Learn more about Material Evolution here.
