£4.5m · Series A · Cleantech · Manchester, UK
Concretene, a University of Manchester spinout developing graphene-based concrete admixtures, has completed a £4.5m first close of its Series A. The financing includes £2m from NPIF II – PXN Equity Finance, managed by PXN Ventures, with existing backers LocalGlobe and Molten Ventures also participating. The capital will expand manufacturing, fund industrial trials and support a Manchester programme to produce graphene from wastewater biogas.
The commercial case depends on taking cement out, not adding graphene
Concretene sells an admixture designed to change how cementitious mixes perform, allowing concrete producers to reduce the amount of cement while maintaining the strength and durability required for a given application. The company says laboratory and scaled trials indicate 10–20% cement savings in selected mixes. It also targets cost neutrality at scale: the admixture’s price would be offset by the cement removed from the recipe.
That mechanism matters because cement is both the highest-carbon and a significant cost component in conventional concrete. A lower-cement mix could give producers an emissions reduction without asking customers to pay a green premium, but only if the additive behaves consistently across changing cement blends, aggregates, curing conditions and production sites. The Series A therefore finances more than extra output. It funds the repeatability and industrial evidence needed for concrete suppliers to qualify revised mixes.
Concretene’s official history says more than 300 cubic metres of its material had been poured in early demonstrator projects by 2021. It later worked with Breedon on scaled ready-mix pours, installed graphene-enhanced railway sleepers at the Global Centre of Rail Excellence and built a pilot manufacturing plant in Manchester in 2025. Those milestones move the product beyond laboratory samples, while larger trials and certification remain central to wider commercial adoption.
The feedstock programme tackles a second scale constraint
The company is also developing a local graphene supply route with United Utilities and Levidian. An Ofwat-backed project uses Levidian’s process to split wastewater-derived biogas into hydrogen and solid carbon, producing graphene nanoplatelets for applications including Concretene’s admixture. Concretene received a £1m share of the separate £10m project award in May 2026.
A reliable local feedstock could reduce batch variation and lower input costs, two constraints the company has identified in conventional graphite-derived graphene. It also makes the manufacturing system more complex: Concretene must scale both the admixture and a consistent source of its active material. The first close gives it capital to test whether its technical results, supply chain and cost-neutral pricing can hold together at multi-tonne production volumes. The next meaningful evidence will be repeatable commercial batches and customer-qualified mixes, rather than the completion of manufacturing capacity alone.
