Concretene's Graphene Admixture Aims to Cut Cement by 30 Percent

Concrete is a numbers game, and the most important one is 7. That’s the percentage of global CO2 emissions that come from cement production, the glue that holds concrete together. For a civil engineer, the challenge is a frustrating paradox: you need cement for strength, but the strength you get is often more than the design code requires, locked in a recipe that hasn’t changed much in a century. A startup from Manchester thinks it has found a way to break that lock, not by reinventing the mix, but by making the cement inside it work harder.

Concretene sells a liquid admixture you pour into a concrete truck. Its active ingredient is graphene, the atom-thick carbon sheets first isolated at the University of Manchester. The company’s formulation, developed with the university’s Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre, uses graphene nanoplatelets as sites for crystal growth during cement hydration, leading to a denser, more robust microstructure [Concretene, Product]. The practical result is concrete that gets stronger, faster, with less cement. In prototype trials, the admixture boosted compressive strength by up to 50% in ready-mix applications and 15-20% in precast forms [University of Manchester, July 2025]. For a builder, that means you can dial down the cement content,the primary source of carbon,while still meeting or exceeding the required strength spec.

The wedge into a conservative industry

The bet is elegantly simple: be a drop-in solution, not a revolution. The construction industry is notoriously resistant to new materials that require retraining, requalification, or changes to established workflows. Concretene’s admixture is designed to be compatible with existing batching plants and lower-carbon cement blends like CEM II and CEM III [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief]. The commercial pitch is cost-neutrality at scale; the company claims the product cuts embodied carbon and accelerates curing with no cost premium to the customer [Concretene, News]. The initial wedge is performance. A gym floor slab poured in Amesbury, Wiltshire in 2021,a 700 square metre pour that was their first large-scale demonstration,reportedly achieved its required strength while using 30% less material and no steel reinforcement [University of Manchester, May 2021].

From lab trials to industrial partners

Moving from one-off pours to repeatable, industrial-scale supply is the next hurdle. Concretene’s traction so far is a mix of demonstration projects and deepening partnerships with established material giants.

• Volume deployed. The company reports more than 300 cubic metres of its graphene-enhanced concrete has been poured across early projects, including a Manchester parking bay and a mezzanine deck at a leisure complex [Concretene, News].
• Key partnerships. It is working with UK precast manufacturer Roger Bullivant and global cement producer Cemex on formulations for lower-carbon cement systems [EU-Startups, October 2024]. A separate collaboration with the Global Centre of Rail Excellence targets carbon reductions of over 20% for railway sleepers [New Civil Engineer, February 2026].
• Funding runway. Concretene has built a capital base blending venture investment and government grants. By July 2025, it reported £6 million in cumulative venture funding and £1.9 million from UK government sources [University of Manchester, July 2025]. In October 2026, it announced a £4.5 million first close of a Series A round intended to fund industrial-scale admixture manufacturing and further trials [Insider Media, October 2026].

The founding team pairs academic roots with construction experience. Co-founders Rob Hibberd and Alex McDermott are both civil engineers, with McDermott also a co-founder of Nationwide Engineering, the construction firm involved in the first pilot [EU-Startups, October 2024]. Dr. Craig Dawson, a former GEIC scientist, is cited as the inventor of the formulation [Concretene, Team].

The scaling equation

The path from promising trials to becoming a standard additive in ready-mix trucks is paved with unit economics and quality control. The risks are tangible.

• Consistency at scale. Lab results showing 25-30% strength uplifts are one thing; delivering a reliable, repeatable performance uplift of 10-20% across thousands of cubic metres of variable aggregate is another [Molten Ventures, October 2024] [Vimeo, retrieved 2026].
• Cost neutrality. The claim of no cost premium is a promise for ‘at scale’. Graphene production, while advancing, is not yet a commodity process. The Series A is earmarked partly for a ‘Manchester graphene’ programme using wastewater biogas as a feedstock, hinting at the need to secure and lower the cost of its core input [Insider Media, October 2026].
• Code compliance. Widespread adoption in structural applications requires formal design code approval, a slow, meticulous process. The company states its product will be design-code compliant, but navigating that bureaucracy is a marathon, not a sprint [Concretene, Product].

Concretene’s most plausible answer to these challenges is its partnership strategy. By embedding with Cemex and Roger Bullivant, it is leveraging their existing quality assurance frameworks, supply chains, and customer relationships. It’s a bet on moving through the industry via its established arteries.

The carbon math and the incumbent

Let’s run the numbers conservatively. The global cement industry emits about 2.4 billion tonnes of CO2 annually. If Concretene’s admixture enables a reliable 20% reduction in cement content for the concrete it touches,a midpoint of its reported range,the carbon savings per cubic metre are substantial [BusinessCloud, October 2024]. Assume one cubic metre of typical concrete contains about 350 kg of cement, producing roughly 300 kg of CO2. A 20% cement reduction saves 60 kg of CO2 per cubic metre. The 300+ cubic metres Concretene has already poured represents a pilot-scale avoidance of around 18 tonnes. The real test is whether it can move that decimal point several places to the right.

The incumbent it must beat isn’t another startup; it’s inertia. It’s the default recipe on the batching plant’s computer, the engineer’s conservative spec, and the cost of doing nothing. Concretene’s task is to make its additive the obvious, painless choice for builders who already want to lower their carbon footprint but can’t afford to gamble on strength or cost. If its graphene can turn excess cement into excess margin, the math might just work.

Sources

1. [University of Manchester, July 2025] Concretene and GEIC proud to partner for another three years | https://www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/concretene-and-geic-proud-to-partner-for-another-three-years/
2. [Concretene, Product] Concretene - Product | https://www.concretene.co.uk/concretene-product
3. [University of Manchester, May 2021] Greener and cheaper: Graphene@Manchester solves concrete’s big problem | https://www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/greener-and-cheaper-graphenemanchester-solves-concretes-big-problem/
4. [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief] Concretene company brief | (web-grounded)
5. [Concretene, News] Concretene - News | https://concretene.co.uk/concretene-newsdetails?newsId=9
6. [EU-Startups, October 2024] Manchester-based Concretene secures €3.5 million to roll out carbon-saving construction tech | https://www.eu-startups.com/2024/10/manchester-based-concretene-secures-e3-5-million-to-roll-out-carbon-saving-construction-tech/
7. [New Civil Engineer, February 2026] Thought leadership on innovation | https://www.concretene.co.uk/concretene-newsdetails?newsId=242
8. [Insider Media, October 2026] University of Manchester spin-out raises £4.5m | https://www.insidermedia.com/news/north-west/university-of-manchester-spin-out-raises-4.5m
9. [Molten Ventures, October 2024] Investment announcement | (cited in research)
10. [Vimeo, retrieved 2026] Concretene performance targets | (cited in research)
11. [BusinessCloud, October 2024] Coverage of Concretene's carbon reduction claims | (cited in research)
12. [Concretene, Team] Concretene - Team | (cited in research)