When you think of an eco -friendly product, a block of concrete cooked in a sort of large oven of the Lachine industrial park is not the first thing that comes to the lead. And yet.
Richard Lapointe is a concrete specialist: he made his master’s degree in civil engineering in this area and worked for multinationals in this sector thereafter. “I understood that he was a big polluter. Then when I was approached by Carbicrete, that’s where I saw the light. When you take the time to read a little more, you realize that concrete, it is true that it is durable in the long term, but at what price? He says.
The catch with concrete is that it contains a lot of cement, a material whose ecological imprint is very high. If the cement industry was a country, it would be the fourth GES transmitter in the world, behind China, the United States and India.
But you can hardly do without concrete when you build buildings.
Carbicrete, of which Richard Lapointe is now vice-president of business development, succeeds in making concrete without cement. This is replaced by steel slag, industrial waste which is usually buried, because we do not know that doing.
In addition, icing on the cake, part of the manufacturing process called “ripening” imprisoned co2 In the blocks, which is not the case with ordinary concrete.
“In terms of compression resistance and sustainability, it is the same performance. On the other hand, our environmental imprint is at least 20 times better, ”underlines Richard Lapointe, an assertion confirmed by two independent evaluation agencies.
Like Lego blocks
For its part, the ISOBLOC company, from Mascouche, manufactures stewed concrete blocks directly on a layer of polystyrene insulation. Going up a wall with its blocks is a bit like playing with Lego: a mason stacks the pieces on each other with mortar, and each room posed includes the exterior wall, insulation and interior wall.
In itself, the concept is interesting from an environmental point of view because it results from the buildings which keep their interior temperature well, but also because it accelerates the work and decreases the number of materials to be brought on the spot.
Photo Martin Chamberland, La Presse
The CEO of Isobloc, Eric Dionne, shows the simplicity of assembling its blocks. The white part is polystyrene, an insulating material.
“A project that lasts a month less is full of trades that do not have to go to the site by burning gas,” sums up Eric Dionne, CEO of Isobloc.
When he met Richard Lapointe in an industry event, professional marriage appeared obvious, and the ISobloc zero range, whose concrete is made with the carbicrete method, was born.
These blocks are currently more expensive to produce than ordinary blocks, but Isobloc sells them the same price to its customers, out of conviction. “We don’t want there to be a barrier at the entrance,” says Eric Dionne.
ISobloc has mainly institutional, commercial and industrial customers, which can be sensitive to environmental impact for various reasons, including the achievement of ESG targets.
The new headquarters of the Duropac packaging company in Candiac will be the first project built with zero isobloc.
Global ambitions
Both isobloc and carbicrete have ambitions of expansion around the world. After all, green concrete, it will be very useful in the decades to come.
Eric Dionne bought Isobloc in 2022, after falling in love with the product, and having given himself the objective of making it known at the height of its potential. The company, which also has installations in Sainte-Marie-de-Beauce and an upcoming factory in Terrebonne, currently sells 200,000 blocks per year, a number which it would like to raise up to the million bar.
Supported by vice-president of business development Anne-Marie Hervieux, Eric Dionne is currently trying to develop the market in the rest of Canada, then in the United States. He also dreams of Europe and even Africa, where he hopes that Isobloc will set up around 2030.
Carbicrete, for its part, works with several partners who use its technology. First there was Patio Drummond, a partnership being finalized in Ontario, then nothing less than a collaboration with Point.P, a subsidiary of the French giant Saint-Gobain, which should manufacture in Hauts-de-France 20,000 tonnes of concrete with its technology from 2026.
Why isobloc zero?
Because two SMEs under construction that unite their forces to decarbonize a very polluting sector, we need that in Quebec – and elsewhere in the world.
