Insider Brief:
- The Rotterdam-based company completed its first continuous run of the demo plant on March 26.
- The project was completed in 18 months, and will be the fastest continuous production facility of its kind, Paebble said.
- The commercial plant is expected to be completed in 2028.
PRESS RELEASE: We’re pleased to announce the next phase of scaling up of our operations, with the successful launch of our demo plant, which has been operating continuously since late March 2025. The project was completed in just under 18 months.
Paebbl’s proprietary technology converts captured CO₂ into future-proof materials, locking the carbon into a permanent, stable mineral form. This carbon-storing product serves as a valuable supplementary cementitious material for the construction industry. Unlike conventional cement manufacturing, which emits CO₂, Paebbl’s process uses it as an input in an energy-efficient process, fundamentally reversing the environmental impact of the building industry.
Until now, our technology has been run as a batch process, which helped us to optimise our process conditions, and successfully scale up 100x in the first two years of operations. But the new demo plant, located at our R&D site in Rotterdam, is set to become the world’s fastest continuous production facility of its kind, helping us come down the cost curve significantly.
We completed the first continuous production run of our demo plant on March 26th, 2025. By showcasing continuous operation at a demo scale, we’re making a major breakthrough in demonstrating the scalability of our technology; it is not only technically sound, but through our collaboration with leading companies in the construction value chain, we are proving that we can meet the demanding requirements of global construction supply chains (as for reference, global annual cement production is around 4 billion tonnes, which accounts for more than 8% of global emissions).
Our demo plant serves not just as a further 20x production scaleup step; it will also be a testing ground for process and product improvement. The plant will help us understand the longer-term maintenance needs of our operations, technology improvement areas, and help us finetune our process simulation capability through real-life validation, a critical stepping stone when moving up to commercial-scale production with our next plant.
From project inception to plant start-up in just 18 months, we are proud to have far outpaced typical project timelines in the sector. This was made possible by re-thinking the engineering and construction process, and thanks to excellent collaboration with our partners SPIE, Schneider Electric, and Vicoma. Building the plant was made possible by a $2.2 million Demonstration Energy and Climate Innovation (DEI+) grant awarded by the Dutch Ministry of Climate and Green Growth, and our investors (Capnamic, 2050, Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Holcim, Aurum Impact, Pale Blue Dot, the Grantham Foundation, and our amazing angel investors).
“Reaching this milestone in record time shows how deeply our team and partners believe in the urgency and promise of building with CO2 as an input. With this plant, we’re one step closer to high-performance materials and climate impact going hand in hand, on a scale that really matters,” said Andreas Saari, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Paebbl.
Paving the way to a commercial plant
“The completion of stage one of our Demo plant is a testament to Paebbl’s determination to make carbon-storing materials a practical reality. By swiftly integrating and commissioning our core equipment, we’re now well-positioned to ramp up production and gather the data we need to move forward to full commercial scale,” adds Arnold Choi, Vice President of Engineering.
Operating the demo plant in Rotterdam will give valuable operational insights and performance data that will serve as the foundation for taking the next step: building the first commercial plant. This project is already in the process of partner and site selection, aiming for completion in 2028.
The progress is meaningful, but it’s just the beginning. Scaling breakthrough technology demands relentless iteration, and we’re committed to working closely with our partners to systematically derisk both the technology and the business. What we’ve built so far is real, and so is the work still ahead.
More hands on deck: now operating across London, Rotterdam, Helsinki, and Stockholm, with close to 60 Paebblers, we need more hands on deck to continue building on our vision of turning the built environment into a future-proof resilient industry.
