TITAN Group: Sustainable and smart construction, powered by digital technology

Transcript

How to build 9.6 million extra homes while also becoming carbon neutral by 2050? That’s the challenge faced by the European construction industry – and building materials manufacturer TITAN Group is meeting it head-on. In the second of our three videos with TITAN CEO Marcel Cobuz, he discusses the group’s digitally-enabled plant optimisation, innovative new products like low-carbon VELTER, and other pillars of its sustainability strategy – including carbon capture.

World Finance: I’m back with Marcel Cobuz from TITAN Group, and I want to talk more about how you’re innovating at TITAN, starting with your digitalisation – how has it transformed the company?

Marcel Cobuz: Digitalisation is a journey. A couple of years back, some of us went to Singularity in Silicon Valley. We came back very excited, and TITAN became one of the first companies in the global cement industry to leverage the advantages of digital technology and AI.

Six of our cement plants are already end-to-end digitalised, leveraging predictive maintenance solutions and optimising the manufacturing process in real time. To get a view, please imagine over 3,000 sensors installed in two thirds of our equipment, with millions of data points feeding the algorithm.

They help us optimise our operations and supply chain, reduce building costs, boost circularity of materials, and of course enhance our customer service. For example, thanks to the use of digital, we have avoided over 20,000 hours of potential manufacturing downtime. This has boosted also productivity by over 10 percent, and prevented over 40,000 tons of CO₂ emissions in less than two years.

World Finance: You’ve also launched a host of innovative new products – tell me more.

Marcel Cobuz: In 2024, we introduced TITAN Edge products, as well as the TITAN Premier services, unifying our portfolio globally under a bold, customer-centric identity.

TITAN Edge features innovative, high-performance, low-carbon cementitious products; this will help us further reduce carbon emissions. In Greece for instance, we have launched a new innovative product, VELTER, which demonstrates how we are advancing performance in superior low-carbon products and construction.

In fact, we are providing these materials to a current iconic project here in Greece, Ellinikon – the largest urban regeneration project in Europe. But we also showcase our products in new construction projects including Skyline in Florida that demand extremely stringent standards.

World Finance: Finally, tell me more about your sustainability strategy, and what you’ve been able to achieve so far.

Marcel Cobuz: Sustainability was at the core of our strategy for a long time. We have committed to reduce emissions across the value chain and achieve net-zero by 2050. And we have recently earned numerous awards on being one of the most sustainable companies in the sector.

In 2023, our teams in Greece launched a pioneering carbon capture project, which will capture more than 20 percent of the group’s carbon emissions and enable the production of over three million tons of zero-carbon cement in Greece and across Europe.

Similarly, on the other side of the Atlantic, in our plant in Roanoke, Virginia, we are developing a first-of-its-kind calcined clay production, which will offer our customers a new innovative alternative to clinker with superior performance. And all this will reduce the carbon emissions by up to 50 percent.

Watch the final part of this interview with Marcel Cobuz: Investing in innovation: TITAN Group’s €40m commitment to transform construction

And if you started here, don’t miss the first video from this shoot: Innovative building materials and solutions: creating the cities of the future