Sustainability-focused industrial solutions provider Brimstone has announced a new commercial agreement with Amazon, securing annual volumes of Brimstone’s low-carbon cement from its forthcoming plant. The announcement coincided with successful third-party test results of Brimstone’s lower-carbon Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) for use in concrete construction.
Cement production, a key component of concrete, is responsible for approximately 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions, with over 900 kg of CO2 emitted for every 1,000 kg of material produced. Founded in 2019, Brimstone has developed a significantly decarbonised 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, stated, “Brimstone has developed a more efficient, economical and sustainable process for producing industry-standard materials that can be used today with standardised, known testing programs, which allows for fast market adoption.”
The initial tests, conducted in collaboration with Amazon’s concrete consultants, evaluated workability, compressive strength, and other key properties based on Amazon slab mix designs. Results indicated that Brimstone’s OPC met ASTM C150 requirements and performed comparably to conventional materials currently used in Amazon buildings. The companies plan to undertake more extensive concrete tests to assess durability, sulfate resistance, aggregate reactivity potential, and other key properties across a broader range of concrete mix designs and applications.
Following these outcomes, Amazon has signed a commercial agreement to reserve annual volumes of Brimstone’s OPC and supplementary cementitious materials (SCM), contingent on the successful completion of testing and commercialisation to meet scale-up requirements.
Asad Jafry, Director of Global Energy, Sustainability and Automation at Amazon, commented, “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.”