— News — EXEGY: Soletanche Bachy pours its first ultra-low carbon concrete foundation barrette

On 9 March 2021, teams from the Port of Le Havre built ultra-low carbon concrete barrette at a depth of 17m, using a binder exclusively composed of blast furnace slag activated with sodium carbonate (concrete with a reduced carbon footprint of 71kg CO₂ eq/m³). The mix design, produced specifically for this worksite, is the result of collaboration between the VINCI Construction laboratory and the Soletanche Bachy materials department, in partnership with Ecocem. As well as a local partner, Béton Solutions Mobiles, which is open to this type of approach, and a loyal, confident customer, which gave us the opportunity to validate that our quality and robustness requirements for concrete foundations could be fully met under real-life conditions using cements with a very high slag content

And their confidence was rewarded!

This is not the first time that the Grand Port Maritime du Havre has entrusted Soletanche Bachy teams with reducing its structures’ carbon footprint. Other tests have been carried out in the past, but this remains a first for the Group, as well as a first for the VINCI group and the construction industry.

This demonstrator is further example of Soletanche Bachy’s ambition to use materials with a lower carbon footprint. The company has developed materials expertise ensuring optimised deployment of low-carbon concrete solutions, in France and abroad.  We now have experience we can draw on and which we have particularly formalised in EXEGY By Soletanche Bachy – a range of low-carbon concrete and grout for foundations adapted to projects’ needs.