Middle East Construction
Fujairah cement plant begins capturing carbon dioxide around the clock and turning it into rock underground
By Staff Writer | 13 August 2026
A pilot at the plant has been running continuously since 15 July, taking carbon dioxide straight from the flue gas and injecting it into rock formations where it hardens into carbonate.
Holcim's cement plant in Fujairah is now capturing carbon dioxide full time and sending it underground, in what is described as a first for the cement industry in the United Arab Emirates. Following a formal commissioning day, the installation has run without interruption since 15 July, drawing carbon dioxide directly from the plant's flue gas at a designed rate of 4 to 4.5 tonnes a day. The captured gas is transported to a site operated by the carbon storage company 44.01 and injected deep into the naturally occurring ultramafic rock formations of Fujairah, where it reacts and sets as solid carbonate.
The plant was formerly Lafarge Emirates Cement. The work has been carried out with the Fujairah Natural Resources Corporation, the Fujairah Environment Authority, NT Energies and Gulf Cryo, and the pilot will run for a further six months to establish whether the process can be scaled and sold.
When we announced this partnership, we set out to prove that industrial decarbonisation is not a far-off goal, but an immediate reality. Achieving full-time capture and mineralisation at our Fujairah plant is an important step forward.
Ali Said, Chief Executive Officer of Holcim UAE and Oman
Why the geology decides the location
Mineralisation is not storage in the ordinary sense. Carbon dioxide pumped into a depleted reservoir stays a gas and has to be monitored, contained and insured against leakage for as long as anyone can foresee. Injected into ultramafic rock, it reacts with magnesium and calcium silicates and becomes stone. The liability profile changes completely: there is no plume to track and nothing to escape. That is why the site is in Fujairah rather than nearer the works of any other cement producer. The emirate has the rock, and the announcement is explicit that the formations are naturally occurring and local, so the gas does not have to travel far or cross a border to reach permanent storage.
The pilot pairs a working cement kiln with in situ mineralisation, which the partners describe as the first combination of its kind anywhere.
What the numbers actually say
Four to four and a half tonnes a day is a small figure beside the output of a cement works, and it is meant to be. When the partnership was announced in December 2025 the stated aim was five tonnes a day, so the operating rate has landed slightly below the design intention, which is ordinary for a first run. The purpose of the six months ahead is not tonnage but data: capture rates against varying kiln conditions, the energy penalty on the plant, transport losses between capture and injection, and how quickly the rock takes the gas.
For anyone drafting or pricing cement supply in the region, the point to watch is what happens after the pilot. Cement sits in what the announcement calls the hard to abate group, because a large part of its emissions comes from the chemical reaction that produces clinker rather than from the fuel burnt to drive it, so efficiency measures alone can only reach so far. A capture route that ends in permanent mineral storage, verified on a live plant rather than modelled, is the sort of evidence that eventually reaches specifications, embodied carbon clauses and tender scoring. None of that follows from a six month pilot on its own. It does, however, become arguable for the first time.