Avonmouth company turning carbon dioxide into sustainable building materials smashes recycling target

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Nicky Godding

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Avonmouth company O.C.O Technology has reached a significant milestone with the announcement that it has reprocessed half a million tonnes of Air Pollution Control residue (APCr) from the Energy from Waste (EfW) sector.

It means that across all three of its UK operations, O.C.O has now captured nearly 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, transforming it into a carbon negative aggregate which is playing a key part in the sustainable buildings of the future.

The figure marks another feather in the cap for the carbon capture specialist, which increased its turnover by £4 million over the last year – up to over £20m – and has seen further expansion and investment in both the UK and overseas projects.

Stephen Roscoe, O.C.O’s Technical Director, said: “We are delighted to have passed such an important landmark – and while it might have taken us 10 years to reach 500,000 tonnes, the carbon capture market is accelerating at such a pace and has such huge potential, that we expect to break through the 1,000,000 tonnes barrier in less than half that time.”

Opened in 2016, the Avonmouth operation, which includes laboratory and manufacturing facilities, employs 25 people. It uses patented technology to process the APCr with waste carbon dioxide gas, enabling the permanent capture of significant amounts of CO₂ and producing a carbon negative artificial aggregate known as Manufactured LimeStone (M-LS), which is used as a block mix in the construction sector.

So far, a total of 21 million blocks have been produced in the UK using the product – the equivalent to 8,000 three-bedroom houses, helping to protect virgin aggregates and improving the sustainability credentials of those developments.

O.C.O, in which Oxfordshire-based Grundon Waste Management is a major shareholder, has also just added a seventh bespoke powder tanker to its certified CarbonNeutral^® transport fleet, to help cope with increased demand from the Energy from Waste sector.

Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe. After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts. She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.