Düsseldorf-Based Co-Reactive Raises €6.5M To Decarbonise Cement Production

The round was led by HTGF, with backing from NRW.Bank, HBG Ventures, AFI Ventures, Evercurious VC and climate-focused business angels, alongside public support including BIK grants from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

Dr.-Ing. Andreas Bremen, co-founder and CEO of Co-reactive, commented, “With the right co-founders and an interdisciplinary team, we are taking CO₂ mineralisation from the lab into continuous industrial operation. The support of our financing partners, with the HTGF as lead investor, gives us the strength to deliver proof of performance with a 1,000-ton demonstration plant and to prepare large-scale deployment together with industry. We are building a solution that is urgently needed today so that it can create impact at industrial scale tomorrow.”

Co-reactive was founded in 2024 as a spin-off from RWTH Aachen University by Dr.-Ing. Bremen alongside Orlando Kleineberg and Willi Peter, following Bremen’s PhD research.

The cement industry is one of the world’s largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions largely due to CO₂ released from limestone during production. Addressing this challenge, Co-reactive has developed a continuous process that mineralises CO₂ using magnesium- or calcium-rich silicate materials such as olivine and metallurgical slags (EAF and BOF).

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The process produces performance-enhancing, CO₂-negative supplementary cementitious materials (CO-SCMs). According to the company, these materials significantly reduce clinker content in cement and construction products without compromising performance. Designed as a drop-in solution the technology can be integrated into existing cement production processes.

“The construction industry is at a turning point: Conventional supplementary cementitious materials such as ground granulated blast furnace slag and fly ash are becoming scarce and expensive as decarbonisation progresses – prices for fly ash have in some cases quadrupled over the past two years. Co-reactive offers a scalable alternative that is not only CO₂-negative, but can also be integrated into existing processes as a drop-in solution. With strong unit economics and an experienced team of mineralisation and plant engineering experts, Co-reactive has the potential to transform the industry in a lasting way,” said Anna Stetter, Investment Manager, HTGF.

The company plans to use the new funding to scale its laboratory and pilot operations in Q2 2026 into a continuous demonstration plant with a capacity of around 1,000 tonnes per year.

In parallel, Co-reactive is working with industrial partners to prepare first-of-a-kind plants at the tens-of-thousands-of-tonnes scale. From 2027 onwards, these facilities are expected to mineralise biogenic or process-related CO₂ streams directly on site at cement and steel plants.

Co-reactive collaborates across the value chain with CO₂ and raw material suppliers, cement and concrete producers, and certification bodies to scale from pilot systems to industrial units in the 100–300 kiloton range.

The team brings expertise spanning CO₂ mineralisation, plant engineering, commercialisation and the scaling of sustainable technologies.

About Co-reactive

Co-reactive is a ClimateTech startup developing CO₂ mineralisation solutions for the cement industry. By reacting captured CO₂ with industrial minerals, it creates low-carbon cement materials, helping reduce one of the world’s largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions.