Belém is seeing some development in carbon capture after MCi Carbon announced a major scaling milestone: its Newcastle-based demonstration plant, dubbed “Myrtle,” is now operational and ready for industrial trials.
The Australian company’s carbon-to-materials technology which transforms captured CO2 and industrial mineral residues into saleable building-materials, marks a key step toward commercialising a sector often touted but scarcely proven.
“At Myrtle, customers can see the process, run a campaign, and use the results to decide on a scalable
project,” said Sophia Hamblin Wang, MCi Carbon Co-Founder and COO, speaking at the Australia Pavilion
at COP30.
She arrived at the summit with a suitcase of concrete samples produced using Myrtle’s carbon-embodied materials, showcasing results from recent Brazilian and Japanese customer trials that highlight strong performance and growing market interest.
Myrtle joins a lineage of MCi innovations: the firm originally operated a pilot plant since 2016, and in April 2024 it broke ground at the site of Orica’s Kooragang Island manufacturing complex.
Earlier, in 2021 the company received a substantial Australian federal grant, and by early 2023 it had completed its rebranding from “Mineral Carbonation International” to MCi Carbon.
Its commercial trajectory gained momentum in February 2025 when partner Mitsubishi UBE Cement Corporation (MUCC) invested $5 million and joined its collaboration agenda.
In the context of the broader decarbonisation challenge, this development is significant. The cement and concrete industries account for roughly 7–8 % of global greenhouse-gas emissions, and innovations in low-carbon materials are becoming increasingly important.
Mineral-carbonation technology, where CO2 reacts with alkaline materials to form stable carbonates, is still considered early-stage, but offers a route to embed CO2 permanently in construction inputs while replacing more carbon-intensive feedstocks.
With Myrtle now capable of mineralising about 2,500 tonnes of CO2 per year into roughly 10,000 tonnes of material, MCi Carbon hands its partners real-world field data rather than modelling alone. The demonstration plant targets steel slag, ultramafic rocks and other feedstocks from hard-to-abate sectors. Ultimately, MCi is positioning itself to help unlock bankable decarbonisation projects, offering a product-first model rather than relying solely on carbon offsets or underground storage.
As demand grows for low-embodied carbon building materials, driven by “Buy Clean” policies and infrastructure decarbonisation mandates, MCi Carbon’s breakthrough can be seen as more than a technical achievement. It may signal a shift in how industrial emissions are managed: turning CO2 into value-added materials rather than merely treating it as waste.
Read more: Japan’s MUCC Invests $5M In MCi Carbon To Advance Cement Decarbonization
