Sustain Alliance is a joint venture between Holcim UK and Tarmac to deliver low carbon and circular solutions to the Lower Thames Crossing.
The National Highways project represents one of the largest integrated construction materials partnerships ever assembled for a UK infrastructure project through a coordinated offering across aggregates, asphalt, concrete, cementitious materials, logistics and contracting.
The Lower Thames Crossing is a new 14.3 mile road that will connect Kent and Essex through a 2.6 mile tunnel beneath the River Thames. As a carbon pathfinder project, it will set a new blueprint for carbon-neutral construction, including using hydrogen (H2) to power equipment. It will also become the UK’s greenest road, with around six times more green space than road.
Once completed, it will surpass the Queensway Tunnel in Liverpool to become the longest road tunnel in the UK, and it is expected to ease congestion at the Dartford Crossing by around 20 percent.
The programme is being delivered by three major contractors, Balfour Beatty for the North Roads section, Bouygues Travaux Publics-Murphy Joint Venture (BMJV) for the Tunnels and Portals and Skanska for Kent roads.
Sustain has started supplying the early enabling works for the project and will ultimately deliver more than three million tonnes of aggregates, including recycled materials, several hundred thousand tonnes of low-carbon readymix concrete and CBGM (Cement Bound Granular Material) from a network of existing and new batching plants plus large volumes of low-carbon asphalt, including recycled materials and blended powders for highways works and stabilisation.