Amazon Signs Deal for Low Carbon Cement with Brimstone
Sustainability-focused industrial solutions provider Brimstone announced a new commercial agreement with Amazon, reserving annual volumes of Brimstone’s low-carbon cement from its forthcoming plant.
The agreement was announced alongside successful third-party test results of Brimstone’s lower-carbon Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) for use in concrete construction.
Cement production, an ingredient in concrete, accounts for approximately 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions, with over 900kg of CO2 emissions generated for every 1,000kg of material produced.
Founded in 2019, Brimstone has developed a significantly decarbonized process to refine a single rock into multiple industrial products, including portland cement, supplementary cementitious materials (SCM), and alumina. The company’s process replaces limestone, typically used in cement production and accounting for 60% of emissions, with carbon-free, calcium-bearing silicate rocks to produce the materials.
Cody Finke, Co-Founder and CEO of Brimstone, said:
“Brimstone has developed a more efficient, economical and sustainable process for producing industry-standard materials that can be used today with standardized, known testing programs, which allows for fast market adoption.”
The initial tests, developed in collaboration with Amazon’s concrete consultants, assessed workability, compressive strength, and other key properties based on Amazon slab mix designs. Results showed Brimstone’s OPC met ASTM C150 requirements and performed comparably to conventional materials currently used in Amazon buildings. The companies said that they plan to conduct more extensive concrete tests to evaluate durability, sulfate resistance, aggregate reactivity potential, and other key properties across a broader range of concrete mix designs and applications.
Based on these outcomes, Amazon signed a commercial agreement to reserve annual volumes of Brimstone’s OPC and supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) pending successful completion of testing and commercialization to scale up requirements.
Asad Jafry, Director of Global Energy, Sustainability and Automation at Amazon, said:
“These initial results are encouraging and demonstrate the potential for Brimstone’s innovative materials to scale across our buildings portfolio and reduce the carbon footprint of concrete.”