Golden Bay launches EcoZero Cement

For more than 100 years, Golden Bay has been New Zealand’s leading local cement manufacturer, evolving to meet the changing needs of the market

EcoZero is Golden Bay’s latest offering as they lead the way in building a sustainable future in the New Zealand concrete industry.

“Using EcoZero in their concrete mix will make it easy for builders to improve the sustainability of their projects, as we’ve already done all the hard work at our Golden Bay plant to reduce the embodied carbon, and offset the rest,” explained Gian Raffainer, Golden Bay General Manager. 

“It’s incredibly exciting to launch New Zealand’s first carbon-neutral cement, giving Kiwis the option to be more sustainable in their building projects.”

How does it work?

To achieve carbon-neutral status, EcoZero from Golden Bay uses low-carbon EcoSure cement and offsets the remaining carbon via Toitū Envirocare.  

“While we continue to make solid progress as we work towards carbon zero, we wanted to ensure it was easy for customers to achieve carbon neutral in the meantime. So, as an interim solution, we’ve worked with Toitu Envirocare to offset the remaining carbon in our cement.”

Carbon offsetting means compensating emissions used by funding an equivalent carbon dioxide saving elsewhere. Toitu Envirocare helps determine the amount of offsetting required and the projects to fund.

Efforts on the ground

The cement Golden Bay produces in New Zealand already has 27% less embodied carbon than the ISCA (Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Australasia) 2020 Baseline, with only 699kg/CO²e per tonne of cement. 

However, this didn’t happen overnight. To achieve this, Golden Bay needed to think outside the box – or rather, the cement bag – to come up with enhancements to the manufacturing process that would improve the plant’s sustainability.

“We quickly realised that consuming used tyres and wood waste as alternative fuels was a win-win,” said Raffainer. “When we started with the idea in 2015, we were aiming to replace 15% of coal with end-of-life tyres. Fast forward to 2022 and our rate of coal substitution is now at 50%, which has obviously delivered further reductions in carbon emissions, as well as helping to offset increased coal costs.”

EcoZero is a general-purpose cement with the same great performance that builders know from Golden Bay, but is now even better for the environment. 

Kiwis who want to use more environmentally friendly products that meet New Zealand standards will be able to buy it off the shelf and not worry about having to pre-order a specified carbon-neutral product.