Schwenk Zement acquires 100% shares of Celitement GmbH

Schwenk Zement KG has taken over all shares of the previous fellow shareholders (including the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) in Celitement GmbH and this has been backdated to 1 January 2020.

From having been a Schwenk-affiliated company, Celitement GmbH became a full subsidiary of the well-established building materials group from Ulm.

 Celitement GmbH was founded in February 2009 and by autumn 2011 had a pilot plant erected on the KIT site (North Campus, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen) to develop the process and manufacture test material of the novel binding agent.



As part of a collaboration agreement with the KIT which expired in late 2019, Celitement GmbH continued to develop the manufacturing process based on several patents for these innovative hydraulic binding agents (known as hydraulic calcium hydrosilicate - hCHS).



Schwenk Zement KG will initially invest in expanding the existing pilot plant and will significantly increase the actual production output. After the expansion has been commissioned, selective innovators will be able to have test quantities amounting to single-digit tonnes. These quantities are still not yet sufficient to construct larger concrete buildings with the innovative binding agent but will enable large-scale practical tests to be carried out in all of the areas of application that have been tested so far. This means that after basic research at KIT and a phase of products and process development which was also very research intensive in the past few years, Celitement GmbH is now entering the final phase before a decision is made by Schwenk regarding the construction of the first industrial plant.



For Schwenk Zement KG the takeover of the pilot plant expands the previously already excellent research opportunities. It now has a unique technical pilot plant that includes an innovative grinding technique among other things, says Celitement.