The problem with decarbonising concrete has rarely been a lack of chemistry. The harder question is whether a lower-carbon mix can survive the economics of a construction site, where margins are tight, specifications are strict, and builders are rarely willing to pay more simply because a material is greener.
Neocrete, a New Zealand-based materials startup, believes it has found a way through that bottleneck. The company has raised US$3.5 million in a funding round led by returning investor Wavemaker Ventures, with participation from Icehouse Ventures and Catalytic Capital for Climate and Health, or C3H, a catalytic investment vehicle of Temasek Trust.
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The fresh capital will be used to scale supply into Europe and the US, while deepening commercial deployment in Southeast Asia. The latter is already becoming an important proving ground for the company: in Brunei, Neocrete’s additive is being used by Readymix Brunei in commercial projects, including the redevelopment of Muara Port, the country’s main port.
Founded in 2018, Neocrete develops additives that allow concrete producers to replace a larger share of cement with lower-carbon materials such as poor-quality fly ash and volcanic ash. These materials are often abundant, but their inconsistent performance has limited their use in structural concrete. Neocrete’s pitch is that its additive can “boost” such materials so they can replace 30 to 50 per cent of cement in concrete while maintaining strength, durability and workability.
That matters because cement is the carbon-heavy ingredient in concrete. Buildings and construction account for about 37 per cent of global emissions, according to the UN Environment Programme, while cement manufacturing alone is responsible for roughly 8 per cent, according to the World Economic Forum.
Brunei as a commercial test case
The Brunei deployment gives Neocrete something many climate materials startups struggle to secure: evidence outside the lab.
Readymix Brunei, the country’s largest ready-mix concrete supplier, began piloting Neocrete’s additives in 2025 to turn locally available waste ash into a usable cement substitute. The ash had previously been dumped because of its poor performance. With Neocrete’s additive, Readymix Brunei is now using it to replace 30 per cent of cement in commercial projects.
To date, 3,700 cubic metres of concrete using Neocrete’s technology have been poured, cutting embodied carbon by 25 per cent, avoiding around 215 tonnes of CO₂, and saving nearly US$20,000. The larger test is Muara Port, where around 65,000 cubic metres of Neocrete concrete are expected to be used. The company projects this could save about US$300,000 and avoid 5,200 tonnes of CO₂.
Neocrete’s performance in Brunei has been independently verified by ABCi, the country’s Building and Construction Industry Control Authority, across concrete grades G25 to G50.
“Neocrete enables us to reduce the cost and carbon of our concrete while delivering a superior product performance for our customers,” said Nick Cocks, CEO of Readymix Brunei. “We are now scaling the use of Neocrete through all our operations.”
For Southeast Asia, the economics are particularly important. The region is still building rapidly — ports, roads, industrial estates, homes, data centres and energy infrastructure — even as governments and large developers begin to face pressure to reduce construction-related emissions. Yet in many markets, green building materials still lose out when they require higher upfront costs or changes to established processes.
Neocrete is trying to avoid both problems. Its additive is designed to work within existing ready-mix and cement production systems, rather than requiring producers to build expensive new plants or overhaul workflows.
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“Globally, we’ve found customers are willing to pay exactly net zero to achieve net zero,” said Zarina Alexander, Neocrete’s CEO and co-founder. “Green premiums do not work in the concrete industry. In Brunei, by economically boosting the performance of abundant, low-quality materials, we’ve now proven that it’s possible for concrete makers to cut carbon and cost, with no trade-offs.”
Why investors are looking at concrete
The round reflects growing investor appetite for hard-to-abate sectors –industries such as cement, steel, shipping and aviation, where emissions are difficult to reduce because they are embedded in physical production processes.
For Wavemaker Ventures, which has backed Neocrete before, the company sits at the intersection of climate impact and industrial practicality. The Singapore-based VC has increasingly looked beyond software into deep tech and sustainability, areas where Southeast Asia’s industrial base can become both a market and deployment ground.
C3H’s participation is also notable. As a Temasek Trust-backed vehicle, it focuses on early-stage companies in climate, health and their intersection. In Neocrete’s case, the investment is aimed not only at financial returns but also at helping a potential emissions-reduction technology cross the commercial adoption gap.
The company said C3H will support Neocrete through connections to partners across the Temasek Trust Collective and the broader climate solutions sector. That network could matter in Southeast Asia, where adoption of new construction materials often depends on regulators, developers, contractors, cement producers and infrastructure owners moving together.
Ryan Tan, Head of C3H, said decarbonising concrete remains “an urgent and difficult challenge” in a hard-to-abate sector, adding that Neocrete’s lower-carbon and lower-cost approach addresses a key barrier to commercial deployment.
A crowded race to clean up cement
Neocrete is not alone in trying to reduce concrete’s carbon footprint. Global rivals include Canada’s CarbonCure, which injects captured CO₂ into concrete; US-based Solidia Technologies, which uses alternative cement chemistry and CO₂ curing; CarbonBuilt, which focuses on lower-carbon concrete blocks; and newer cement-process companies such as Brimstone, Sublime Systems and Fortera. Europe’s Ecocem is also pushing low-carbon cement technologies. The approaches differ, but the commercial hurdle is similar: producers need emissions reductions without sacrificing cost, strength, certification or supply reliability.
Neocrete’s distinction is that it does not try to replace concrete production outright. Instead, it aims to make existing supplementary cementitious materials — industrial by-products or natural pozzolans that can partially replace cement — perform well enough for wider use. In markets where fly ash quality varies or supply chains are fragmented, that could be valuable.
The opportunity is also tied to a looming materials shift. Traditional high-quality fly ash, a by-product of coal power generation, has long been used in concrete. But as coal plants retire in some markets and construction demand grows elsewhere, the industry needs ways to use more variable ash streams and alternative materials.
Neocrete’s next phase will test whether the Brunei results can translate across geographies with different regulations, raw materials and buyer behaviour. The company has been selected for Amazon’s 2026 Greentown Labs Go Build Programme with the Global CO₂ Initiative, and won the London Climate Action Week flagship pitching event at Reset Connect in June 2026.
Those credentials may help open doors, but the company’s larger challenge is execution: convincing conservative construction supply chains that a new additive can be reliable at scale.
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Matt Kennedy-Good, Neocrete’s co-founder and president, summed up the company’s ambition plainly: “Neocrete’s mission is to make low-carbon concrete the default choice, by making it perform better and cost less.”
If the company can keep proving that equation beyond Brunei, its biggest contribution may be to shift the climate conversation in construction away from paying more for greener materials and towards making the cheaper option the cleaner one.
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