Australia Opens the World's First Carbon Refinery MYRTLE - MCi Carbon Gives Global Heavy Industry a Profitable Pathway to Decarbonize

Australian clean technology company MCi Carbon (MCi) today officially opened Myrtle, the world’s first fully-integrated multi-purpose carbon refinery, marking a defining milestone for global industrial decarbonization.

Built on 15 years of Australian R&D, MCi’s mineral carbonation facility transforms CO₂ and low-value mineral feedstocks into carbon-embodied materials used in everyday products. These include concrete, plasterboard, paint, paper, glass and adhesives – permanently locking carbon into the raw materials the global economy already relies on.

The technology has the potential to reduce net emissions in hard-to-abate industry by up to 90 percent. Unlike conventional decarbonization approaches, the company generates saleable products in the process, reframing industrial decarbonization as an investment with a return, rather than a cost. The market for carbon-embedded construction materials is projected to reach USD 1 trillion per year by 2050.

With Myrtle now open on Kooragang Island in Newcastle, global industrial companies can rapidly validate MCi’s platform against their own feedstock, emissions profile and commercial requirements – and generate the commercial data needed to make profitable decarbonization an investment decision, not a compliance cost.

Marcus Dawe, Founder and CEO of MCi Carbon said: "Heavy industry now has a commercial pathway to decarbonize – and profit while doing so. By transforming CO₂ and low-value mineral feedstocks into carbon-embodied materials that cement, steel, plastics, glass and construction industries already buy, MCi Carbon's mineral carbonation platform reframes decarbonization as an investment with a return, not a cost to be managed.”

“Myrtle is open. Our invitation to the leaders of hard-to-abate industry is simple: send us your CO₂ profile and your feedstocks. We’ll run a rapid validation and hand back the technical, product and commercial data you need to make profitable decarbonization your next capital decision, not your next compliance problem.”

Australia's Minister for Climate Change and Energy, the Hon. Chris Bowen MP, officially opened Myrtle in Newcastle - a milestone made possible by more than a decade of Australian Government support. MCi Carbon has received more than AUD $40 million in cumulative government funding across federal and NSW programs, including the Carbon Capture Technologies Program and the CCUS Development Fund.

The company has also raised more than AUD $40 million from global private investors, including founding investor Orica, cornerstone investor ITOCHU Corporation, Mizuho Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank and Mitsubishi UBE Cement Corporation from Japan, and RHI Magnesita - MCi Carbon’s first global commercial customer.

Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen said the project showed how regions like the Hunter can be at the center of Australia’s clean industrial future.

“We’re backing Australian innovation to cut emissions and create the next generation of clean industries,” Minister Bowen said.

“This demonstration plant is a glimpse of what could become a major new industry for places like Newcastle and the Hunter. Taking carbon dioxide from industrial production and turning it into materials for homes, buildings and manufacturing is exactly the kind of practical, Australian-made technology we should be backing. This is about cutting emissions, creating new products, and building new clean industries, literally brick by brick,” Minister Bowen said.

MCi Carbon's Flexible Platform Acts as a “Carbon Refinery”: Turning Diverse Industrial CO₂ into Valuable Materials

Mineral carbonation is a low-pressure, low-energy chemical process. When industrial CO₂ reacts with mineral-rich feedstocks - including steel slag and waste rock - it forms stable carbonates: chemically permanent mineral compounds with no leakage risk and no monitoring liability. The CO₂ is locked into those materials at the molecular level. The process is zero waste.

The MCi platform is consciously versatile. Where other decarbonization technologies are built for a single input and output, Myrtle accepts diverse CO₂ streams and a wide range of reactive mineral inputs and can produce multiple product lines from one integrated facility. That flexibility means the platform can be configured for two distinct deployment models: installed directly on-site at an industrial facility, integrated into existing processes; or operated hub-and-spoke from a central facility serving multiple emitters across a region. Both models have export potential - MCi’s technology and the materials it produces can be deployed wherever hard-to-abate industry operates, making it a globally transferable decarbonization platform.

Orica, MCi Carbon's founding investor and industrial partner, hosts Myrtle at its Kooragang Island ammonia plant, supplying the facility's CO₂ and providing a working example of the on-site integration model in action. Myrtle can transform up to 2,500 tons of CO₂ per year into up to 10,000 tons of saleable material, producing several tons of product for every ton of CO₂ processed.

Critically, Myrtle is also the bridge to commercial scale. Before any first-of-a-kind commercial plant proceeds to a final investment decision, customers and financiers need real process data, real product performance data and a validated business case. Myrtle generates all three - with real feedstocks, at meaningful volumes, under industrial conditions. The platform is designed to scale to hundreds of thousands of tons of CO₂ per year, with materials feeding directly into customer supply chains. The data Myrtle produces is what makes that scale-up investable.

Heavy industry accounts for more than 30 percent of global emissions, with cement and steel alone responsible for around 15 percent. Supported by IPCC-endorsed science, mineral carbonation has the potential to permanently lock away up to 10 percent of global emissions - not by storing carbon underground, but by putting it to work in the materials the world already builds with.

At peak operation, Myrtle will support up to 50 highly skilled local jobs - including engineers and operators, many transitioning from fossil fuel and heavy industry roles. Scaled globally, MCi’s platform has the potential to create new industries and new skilled employment across the cement, steel and chemicals sectors as they transition to the low-carbon economy.

Sophia Hamblin Wang, Co-Founder and COO of MCi Carbon, said: "Myrtle embodies everything we've been building towards. We've spent more than a decade proving that carbon dioxide doesn't have to be a problem, it can be a building block. Now we have an industrial-scale facility that can transform CO₂ from industry into materials the economy already needs and buys.”

“This isn't a climate technology that needs a carbon price to work. The business model stands on its own. The way is open for industrial companies eager to stop paying to manage their emissions and start generating value from them.”

MCi Carbon’s First Commercial Customer is Targeting a Plant by 2030

Myrtle is running its first commercial validation campaign with RHI Magnesita, a global leader in refractory products headquartered in Austria. The campaign is designed to build the technical, product and commercial case for a first-of-a-kind commercial plant at RHI Magnesita’s Austrian site, targeted for 2030. After a global review of decarbonization technologies, RHI Magnesita selected MCi Carbon as its partner, investing more than USD $10 million to advance the technology toward commercial scale. First-stage capacity to produce over 200,000 tons of green minerals absorbing 50,000 tons of CO₂ per year is planned, with a shared ambition to scale up in due course.

In Australia, material produced at Myrtle has been successfully trialed in concrete field tests hosted by Boral at its Maldon Cement Works, as part of a project led by Smart Crete CRC with Transport for NSW and the University of Technology Sydney. Initial results show MCi Carbon’s cementitious material performed on par with conventional inputs under real commercial batching conditions.

In Japan, Mitsubishi UBE Cement Corporation (MUCC) - the country’s second-largest cement maker - has invested USD $5 million in MCi Carbon and signed a three-way Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ITOCHU Corporation to evaluate the technology for its Japanese operations.

“Cement, steel, chemical and mining companies built the modern world. They will build the low-carbon one too, and Myrtle gives them a commercial pathway to do it. The platform operating in Newcastle today can be deployed on industrial sites anywhere in the world. From here, our job is to move as fast as we possibly can,” Ms Hamblin Wang said.