Slag Cement Association Honors Ozinga with 2022 Slag Cement in Sustainable Concrete Award for Partnership in Meta Data Center
Fourth-generation, family-owned construction materials company Ozinga was recently awarded a 2022 Slag Cement in Sustainable Concrete Award in Innovative Application from the Slag Cement Association (SCA) for their partnership in the Meta Data Center in DeKalb, IL. This award highlights construction projects throughout the United States that showcase the broad applications of slag cement and its impact on creating more durable and sustainable concrete.
Meta collaborated with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to use artificial intelligence to generate potential low carbon mixture designs, which were then tested and refined by Meta in partnership with Ozinga to ultimately use in Meta’s 2.4 million ft2 (223,000 m2) data center campus in DeKalb, IL. The use of slag cement allowed Meta to place at scale and also deliver against its carbon reduction goals. More information on this project can be found on the SCA’s website.
“Meta’s Dekalb Data Center project is proof that when all stakeholders are actively engaged in efforts for more sustainable building, the positive impact is far greater,” said Ryan Cialdella, Vice President of Innovation and Market Development at Ozinga. “Our team at Ozinga was thrilled to find a concrete solution that reduced the overall embodied carbon of the data center. Utilizing slag cement in the mix design was crucial in achieving Meta’s goals for carbon reduction while still maintaining the concrete’s performance, workability and strength.”
The Meta project was one of 18 to win this award from the SCA, which is offered in six categories.
In the SCA’s official press release, SCA Marketing Director Nick Brimley states, “It is great to see such a diverse selection of concrete projects be nominated and gain recognition this year. All of the winners have illustrated how important slag cement is in improving the strength and durability of concrete, while also lowering the embodied carbon associated with concrete construction.”
The winning projects were unveiled and celebrated on April 5, 2023 during the spring ACI Concrete Convention in San Francisco, California.