20 April 2023

We’re pleased to be teaming up with the government to help reduce carbon emissions from asphalt making.

A $215,000 partial co-funding grant announced today through the Government’s Decarbonising Industry (GIDI) Process Heat Contestable Fund will help retrofit Fulton Hogan’s Miners Road asphalt plant with a foaming bitumen bar. This enables warm-mix rather than hot-mix asphalt production, saving an estimated 277 tonnes of carbon a year.

“With process heat constituting around a third of this country’s total energy use, and asphalt and bitumen activities contributing around 20% of Fulton Hogan’s New Zealand carbon footprint, the long-term importance of developing lower temperature alternatives should not be understated,” says Fulton Hogan’s NZ Sustainability Manager, Dale Eastham

Conventional hot-mix asphalt is generally produced at temperatures of up to 200⁰C, while warm-mix asphalt is produced using special techniques and additives to reduce the production temperature to between 100⁰C and 150⁰C. This significant decrease CO2 emissions in manufacturing, and wider adoption of warm-mix asphalt would have significant flow-on benefits for the construction industry.

Fulton Hogan has committed to reducing its carbon emissions by 30% by 2030 and has adopted a net carbon zero target by 2050. Both of these re from a 2021 baseline. This means a company-wide effort to ‘engineer out’ and drive down emissions through reducing diesel use, investing in modern plant and equipment, making use of remote access technologies, and empowering the company’s 5,500-strong team in NZ to find ways to do their day-to-day smarter and more efficiently.