CarboClearTech

CarboClearTech is the full-scale carbon capture and storage project planned at Holcim's Martres-Tolosane cement plant. It is intended to capture approximately 700,000 tonnes of residual CO₂ per year and bring the entire plant to net-zero by 2031. The plant produces around 750,000 tonnes of cement per year (roughly 4% of French cement production), and Holcim has already invested €124 million in plant modernization, including replacing the kiln line and expanding alternative-fuel use. In October 2024, the EU Innovation Fund selected CarboClearTech for a grant, making it one of eight Holcim European CCUS projects supported by the Fund and the first CO₂ capture site planned for southwestern France and southern Europe. When announced, Holcim also indicated that the Martres-Tolosane site would host an open innovation platform from 2025 onward where partners could test new carbon capture technologies at industrial scale; that platform is what launched in 2026 as CaptureLab. CaptureLab launched on June 10, 2026 as the open innovation platform that Holcim had previously flagged as part of the Martres-Tolosane site. Billed by Holcim as the cement industry's first industrial-scale carbon capture test platform, the 2,500 m² facility was developed by Holcim R&D teams in Switzerland and France and uses a plug-and-play architecture so that manufacturers, startups, and researchers can connect different capture systems directly to the plant's real flue gas. The first pilot tenant, announced the same day, is Air Liquide's Cryocap™ FG (Flue Gas) unit, an industrial-scale cement-specific version of Air Liquide's cryogenic capture technology that handles 3,000 Nm³/hour of flue gas and is designed to remove impurities and pre-concentrate CO₂ before final purification. The Cryocap unit is modular and can be relocated to other industrial sites after its run at Martres-Tolosane. CaptureLab is best understood as the R&D and validation arm of the broader Martres-Tolosane program, used to qualify technologies that will ultimately be deployed at full industrial scale through CarboClearTech and across Holcim's other EU-supported CCUS projects.