Betolar has scooped a Building Materials Industry Innovation award in Paris.

A hollow-core slab innovation based on Betolar's Geoprime solution has won first prize at the INTERMAT Innovation Awards at Intermat Exhibition in Paris. Betolar was awarded in the category of Building, Civil Engineering and Concrete sector.

The award process seeks innovations in equipment, technologies, services or products that contribute to the development of the construction and materials industries. This is the ninth time the prize has been granted.

Betolar's Geoprime hollow-core slab solution produces the world's lowest-emission hollow-core slabs. Betolar helps precast concrete manufacturers meet the demand for low-carbon construction products.


"Hollow-core slabs are a central and demanding structural solution in concrete construction, and the development of a low-carbon solution has taken a long time. It's great that our long-term development work is now getting the attention it deserves," said Betolar's Chief Technology Officer Jarno Poskela.

Cement is responsible for seven percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. As a volume product of construction, hollow-core slabs are a significant source of emissions. For example, they produce a third of the emissions of concrete mass in an apartment building. In Europe, switching to a low-carbon solution would bring calculated savings of more than three million tonnes in carbon dioxide emissions per year.

"The concrete binder is the main source of CO2 emissions in the whole value chain. Alternative solutions to the clinker cement must be explored, tested and adopted at scale. The geopolymer-based hollow-core slabs by Betolar are a demonstration that this is possible today. The jury appreciated the combination of low-carbon binders with prefabrication to achieve a step forward in the decarbonisation of the concrete value chain," the competition jury explained.

Betolar's low-carbon Geoprime concrete material solution allows high-volume industrial side streams to be converted to replace cement as a binder. Geoprime hollow-core slabs have similar properties to traditional cement-based slabs, but their carbon footprint is up to 75% lower.