TITAN Group integrated cement plant in Roanoke, Virginia, US 
Author: Marcel Cobuz, CEO, TITAN group
Today’s world is changing at an unprecedented pace. Driven by urbanisation and population growth, demand for affordable housing and resilient cities and infrastructure is increasing. The advances in data and connectivity, analytics and human-machine interaction are disrupting every sector in every part of the world. Climate change and resource scarcity call for a transition to durable and sustainable solutions.
With the innovation drive in the US and in Europe with the new Industrial EU Green Deal, the building materials’ sector is changing fast across its value chain, requiring new technologies and investments in AI and in building new capabilities.
Against this backdrop, businesses like TITAN – a global leader in the building materials industry – cannot merely react and adapt. They need to anticipate, lead and act. And that is exactly what TITAN is doing through innovation, digitalisation and new investments. We are transforming our materials and product range across more than 25 countries to address evolving customer needs, tackle modern construction challenges and help build faster, durable and resilient cities. Challenges and ambitious goals don’t daunt us; they energise us, and our purpose – making the world around us a safe, sustainable and enjoyable place to live – is deeply embedded in everything we do.
Innovating towards durability
We are fully aware of our responsibility to meet the increasing performance needs of our customers and at the same time we are committed to lower the carbon footprint of our materials and operations, with the target of keeping global warming under 1.5°C. To rise to the challenge, we are implementing a comprehensive growth and sustainability strategy, targeted at achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across our entire value chain by 2050. We have set additional near-term targets for 2026; these include doubling our innovative low-carbon product portfolio, so that it will account for at least 40 percent of our total portfolio, by integrating more alternative cementitious materials; reducing specific, net-direct carbon emissions to below 550kg per tonne of cementitious product; and more than doubling our use of low-carbon alternative fuels and renewable electricity. The relevant roadmap of actions is already in motion, backed by over 100 value-adding initiatives and growth investments across all our geographies and value chain.
We are active on multiple fronts: In 2023, our teams launched the development of a pioneering carbon capture project in Greece, near Athens, which is partly financed by the EU Innovation Fund. The project is designed to capture 20 percent of the group’s carbon emissions and enable the production of more than three million tonnes of innovative zero-carbon cement for future concrete construction across Europe.
Meanwhile, at our plant in Roanoke, Virginia, we are developing a first-of-its-kind calcined clay production line that expected to offer our customers an innovative alternative material with superior performance, while reducing carbon emissions by up to 50 percent. This is partly financed by an award from the US Department of Energy.
In addition, we are making significant investments to support the introduction of alternative cementitious materials to our markets. After activating partnerships in pozzolanic natural materials in Greece and Turkey, in slag waste from the steel industry in Indonesia, as well as in clay in the US earlier this year, we launched new joint ventures, this time focused on fly ash in India and the UK.
Last year, we launched TITAN Edge, our family of innovative, high-performance, low-carbon cementitious products. These include limestone-based and pozzolanic cements, which can replace a large part of clinker in traditional cement, further helping to reduce carbon emissions. New innovative products like VELTER concrete, introduced in Greece, also demonstrate how we are advancing performance in superior low-carbon construction.
These innovations are already being used. Current iconic projects we are providing materials for include Ellinikon – the largest urban regeneration project in Europe, set to be built on the site of Athens’ former airport. It will comprise a series of low-carbon, energy-efficient buildings, including Greece’s tallest skyscraper, alongside a huge park, new coastal waterfront area, as well as resilient infrastructure. We are also supplying innovative low-carbon, high-durability concrete to next-generation data centres in Virginia, and to new construction projects in Florida that demand stringent standards.
Our responsible growth strategy is bearing fruit. We made considerable progress in reducing our carbon footprint in 2024, cutting carbon emissions to less than 600kg per tonne of cementitious product. We achieved this through a record 21 percent use of low-carbon alternative fuels and through the integration of over two million tonnes of cementitious and alternative materials in our supply chain. Our innovative cementitious products accounted for almost 30 percent of our production volumes.
Our efforts to date have earned the loyalty of our customers and partners and global recognition; in 2024, the Financial Times named us one of Europe’s Climate Leaders, and we were awarded Leadership Status on climate change by the CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) for the fourth consecutive year. The same year, the FTSE4Good Index Series also acknowledged our performance.
Investing in new ventures
Digital innovation is also a key driver of TITAN’s success and growth, and we are accelerating our efforts in this space. To this end, in 2024 we continued our investments in research and innovation and significantly advanced our Venture Capital initiative, launched in 2023. We are planning to invest up to €40m in relevant start-ups over a three-year period, targeting ventures that can create business value and advance innovation with and for our customers and stakeholders.
Digital innovation is also a key driver of titan’s success and growth
Our first four investments focused on coastal protection materials and solutions, next-generation cementitious materials and energy storage technologies. We also invested in a global, early-stage VC fund focused on innovative sustainable construction in the built environment. More recently, we made three new investments in companies working on artificial intelligence, waste upcycling, and PropTech and ClimateTech. We also invested in a leading venture capital firm focused on technology for the real estate industry.
These collaborations underscore our commitment to supporting innovative technologies and start-ups that have the potential to enhance the competitiveness of our industry, address challenges in the building materials sector and promote innovative and sustainable construction. At the same time, they are designed to enhance our exposure to disruptive technologies and bolster our growth strategy through innovative products, services and materials.
The industry’s digital transformation
We are also investing heavily in our own technology, and embracing digitalisation to support our growth goals, boost our overall efficiency and enhance the experience of our customers through value-added services. Driven by our deep-rooted, entrepreneurial spirit, TITAN was among the first companies in the global cement industry to explore and leverage the opportunities and advantages created by digital technology and AI. We started early – back in 2017 – and have since conceived, designed and implemented numerous digital technologies and solutions.
Digitalisation is now one of our key strategic priorities. We envisage a fully digitalised, customer-oriented, and flexible operating model by 2026. We have implemented digital innovations across all our plants and in many of our processes. Leveraging digital technologies, we are optimising our manufacturing operations and supply chain, while increasing productivity, enhancing reliability of our assets, improving energy efficiency, reducing building costs, boosting circularity and enhancing customer service.
Data management is a key focus for digitalisation. Using thousands of specially designed sensors embedded in our cement plants and our logistics infrastructure, we collect vast amounts of data generated during the manufacturing process and develop artificial intelligence models that optimise plant and supply-chain operations.
Our vision is to foster a broader entrepreneurial mindset that helps lead growth in the business
Among these are AI-based, autonomous real-time optimisers, pioneering in the cement industry, which have now been installed in two thirds of our equipment. Benefits include boosting productivity by over 10 percent, improving product quality and helping us reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions (over 40,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions prevented in less than two years) – with minimal investments.
Our predictive and prescriptive maintenance solution, which detects issues and prevents failures, is now live at all our plants, increasing reliability and maximising operational efficiency. As a result, we have avoided over 20,000 hours of potential manufacturing downtime in recent years.
Among other initiatives, we have also developed a Dynamic Logistics solution to harness the power of data and optimise the distribution of ready-mix concrete – from order placement to scheduling and dispatch. This solution is now used across most of our US operations, resulting in substantial increase in productivity and improvement in customer service through live notifications.
We have also launched pilot tests aimed at automating the extraction and processing of raw materials, and at predicting cement quality months before the product is applied on the construction site. Six of our plants are now fully digitalised, leveraging solutions for both manufacturing optimisation in real time and predictive maintenance.
Impact in the wider industry
It’s not only within our own business that we are making waves, though. We believe knowledge and innovation grow when shared, so in 2022, we made the decision to establish CemAI in the US – a spin-off that offers other companies next-generation solutions for predictive plant maintenance and real-time optimisation of manufacturing process.
Under CemAI, our solutions are now available to the entire global building materials industry, allowing others to optimise processes and ensure issues are resolved before they affect a plant’s operation. Our objective is to contribute to a broader ecosystem of digital innovation – and one of our most exciting ventures in this space is the TITAN Digital Accelerator. Launched in collaboration with the Centre for Research & Technology Hellas (CERTH) and the International Hellenic University in Greece, this initiative aims at developing cutting-edge digital tools that will revolutionise the building materials industry, benefiting both TITAN and the wider industrial ecosystem. We are currently developing innovative robotic and GenAI solutions for cement manufacturing, leveraging the infrastructure and partnerships of the Digital Accelerator.
Beyond this, we have also established Innovation Hubs in the US and other locations to further promote joint value-creation processes, developing partnerships with customers, scientists and the wider start-up ecosystem.
Fostering a culture of innovation
At TITAN, everything is about people. So is innovation of any kind, which we leverage for the growth, enablement and empowerment of our people. We believe the real value of technology comes from what people do with it. We want employees to be able to focus on high-value tasks that call for strategic thinking, creativity, intuition and emotion, while technology boosts efficiency on simpler tasks.
And we want to ensure nobody gets left behind. To that end, last year we launched a learning tool to help our employees assess and elevate their digital skills; all 6,000 TITAN employees will soon be able to become certified digital enthusiasts, ready for the next phase of the industrial-meets-digital transformation.
Through a broad range of other learning programmes and initiatives – tailored to address the differing needs of employees from diverse backgrounds and roles – our aim is to support employees to leverage digital technologies, making sure their skills keep apace with the rate of transformation underway. We will also offer ongoing training around the benefits, uses and limitations of AI to ensure its optimal use.
It is not just AI skills that we want our employees to develop, of course; our vision is to foster a broader entrepreneurial mindset that helps lead growth in the business. We believe everyone can innovate, as long as they have the tools, motivation and support. With that in mind, in 2023 we introduced ‘Ideation Challenge’ – an internal ideas competition that promotes, encourages and rewards innovation among our employees, regardless of their role, position or level.
The response to this was impressive; the first challenge saw more than 220 ideas submitted. Our second Ideation Challenge, launched in 2024, saw nearly 10 percent of our people participate, covering all areas of innovation – from manufacturing, products and services to brand awareness, the customer experience, workplace environment and beyond. It’s another way to embrace innovation across the organisation, while empowering employees to have a genuine impact.
Empowering employees & communities
But our focus on employee development goes beyond technology and innovation. We believe people are the cornerstone of our long-term success, and continuous learning in every area is a vital part of our approach. In recent years, we have accelerated the rollout of innovative and increasingly personalised learning tools across our business. These programmes are designed to develop technical expertise, strengthen leadership behaviours and foster a mindset of curiosity and accountability. We want to attract top-tier talent and ensure continuous development opportunities for every employee.
To help achieve this, last year we launched the TITAN Leadership Model, a framework designed to support leadership growth across every level of the organisation. This reflects our belief that everyone should have the opportunity to lead, grow and leave their mark. By investing in people, we want to unlock their full potential and strengthen the foundations of our business for the long term.
This focus on people isn’t limited to employees; it also translates into working with local communities around our operations. Ensuring we make a meaningful and sustainable contribution to all our stakeholders is an integral part of our history, and it’s still a key commitment today.
We conduct local assessments to help us understand the issues that matter most to each community and contribute resources to help build solid foundations. These efforts focus on the environment, health and safety, employability, entrepreneurship, social inclusion, education and poverty reduction, with a particular focus on helping young people to develop their professional skills. In 2024, we offered 365 internships in different regions across the world.
Key examples of value-creating initiatives include our partnership with ReGeneration, the largest paid placement, professional and personal development programme in Greece; the launch of various programmes promoting the development of digital skills; and initiatives in the US designed to provide young women with the skills needed to work in the industry in the future; and programs in Brazil introducing young minds to the world of robotics.
Positive results meet future challenges
Financial results show our efforts are paying off. Last year, we achieved record sales of €2.64bn as net profit reached €315m, and earnings per share exceeded €4.20 (on a like-for-like basis). These achievements were driven by higher performance across all product lines, pricing performance and enhanced operational and cost efficiencies.
In another key milestone, our US business, Titan America, was also successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange – a bold step that underscores our commitment to unlocking value and expanding our reach. We expect a further improved financial performance in 2025. The need for construction materials and solutions remains robust for the long term, as urbanisation and population growth drive demand for housing and infrastructure.
There are challenges to face, however. Energy prices remain volatile, calling for greater efficiency and innovation. At the same time, housing deficits are pressing – especially in the social sector. We have the tools and technology needed to help meet demand, but we need to move faster. Building performance requirements, such as circularity, insulation and energy efficiency, are also growing fast.
Amid heightened uncertainty, TITAN remains focused on what it does best. We are proud to have built a culture of collaboration, bold thinking and continuous improvement everywhere we operate – and we believe innovation, digitalisation, AI and technology can help us and the wider industry meet performance and environmental goals.
How industries across the board fare remains to be seen. But whether through innovative sustainable solutions, advanced digitalisation or strategic expansion, we remain committed to growing and shaping a better, more sustainable world – and we are excited to help forge a path into the future, both within our sector and beyond it.
All this, while sticking to our values: At TITAN we care, we dare, we build to last, and we walk the talk. These have always been and will remain our guiding principles.