Piling advances on Padeswood, the first carbon capture plant at a UK cement works

What happened

By the end of July 2026, more than 600 concrete piles had been driven at Heidelberg Materials UK's Padeswood cement works in Flintshire, north Wales — the groundwork for what the company describes as the UK's first carbon capture facility at a cement plant. The piling, reported on 31 July, sits within a retaining wall containing roughly 5,000 cubic metres of concrete. More than 60,000 tonnes of aggregate have gone into the construction platform, and around 25,000 tonnes of topsoil have been stripped and stockpiled for later reinstatement.

The site currently averages 80 construction workers a day, a figure expected to roughly double to about 160 by the end of the year. Earlier enabling works included newt and security fencing and the diversion of overhead powerlines and cables.

The project reached a final investment decision with the UK government in September 2025, announced by energy minister Michael Shanks, with construction starting later that year. Operations are due to begin in 2029.

The technology

The capture plant is designed to remove around 95 per cent of the works' process emissions — approximately 800,000 tonnes of CO2 a year at full capacity. Worley and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries hold the engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) contract. Captured CO2 will be compressed and sent by pipeline for storage beneath Liverpool Bay as part of the HyNet North West cluster.

There is a circularity to the construction itself. All concrete used on the project incorporates evoZero, Heidelberg Materials' carbon-captured, near-zero cement produced at its Brevik plant in Norway — itself home to a capture facility designed for roughly 400,000 tonnes a year, about half that plant's emissions. "We are using evoZero cement wherever possible to lower the carbon impact of the project," said Simon Willis, chief executive of Heidelberg Materials UK. The company has said the Padeswood facility will be the world's first carbon capture plant enabling fully decarbonised cement production, since capturing biogenic CO2 from the kiln could make the product net-negative.

Why it matters for UK & Ireland

Cement is among the hardest industries to decarbonise: much of what a kiln emits is process CO2 from the chemistry of making clinker, not from the fuel burned — which is why the Padeswood plant is designed around process emissions, and why efficiency measures and fuel switching alone cannot get close to zero. Capture is, for now, the only credible route for deep cuts. Padeswood is therefore the leading UK test of whether full-scale CCS can work commercially in heavy industry, not just in power generation.

It is also an anchor load for HyNet, the Track-1 CCUS cluster serving north-west England and north Wales. A cement works committed to shipping around 800,000 tonnes a year gives the cluster's transport and storage system a substantial, steady customer from the outset. On employment, the project is expected to protect more than 200 existing jobs at Padeswood, create about 50 permanent roles and support up to 500 during construction.

For the wider Irish Sea region, a working capture-and-storage chain across Liverpool Bay would put operational CO2 storage infrastructure within reach of industrial emitters on both sides of the sea, and give Irish policymakers a live reference point as they weigh their own decarbonisation options for cement and other process industries.

What to watch

Three things. First, whether the piling and civils programme holds to a schedule that supports operations in 2029 — first-of-a-kind industrial capture projects have a record of slippage. Second, the ramp-up of the workforce and the supply chain through 2027, when the main mechanical and capture-plant installation begins.

Third, the dependency on HyNet's pipeline and storage system being ready to receive CO2: a capture plant with nowhere to send its output earns nothing. Progress at Liverpool Bay, where first injection is targeted for 2028, is as important to Padeswood as anything happening inside the fence in Flintshire.