Midland Quarry Products in Coalville has secured a share of nearly £1.5million worth of funding.

The money will be used to develop a net zero carbon route map for its Cliffe Hill quarry and asphalt plant as part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of Future Programme (IFP).

BEIS is providing £1.46 million, through its Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, for a scoping study carried out by engineering and project management consultancy Atkins to investigate options for decarbonising 15 industrial sites across the UK.

The roadmaps will consider the most viable decarbonisation options for each site, including new technologies such as carbon capture and utilisation and the feasibility of fuel switching, upgrades, process changes and energy optimisation.

MQP, which is part of Hanson UK, was successful in winning IFP funding to develop a net zero road map in the lower emission sites category.

Rick Green, MQP managing director, said: "The funding we have received from BEIS will help inform and speed up the development of a decarbonisation roadmap at Cliffe Hill – a first for an aggregates/asphalt operation in the UK – and will also help us meet our overall ambition to be a net zero carbon business by 2050.

"This industry-leading project will allow us to evaluate various carbon reduction options and test their effectiveness in a live environment.

"There is huge potential to upscale the results: Hanson alone has around 80 aggregate and asphalt sites and there is a further 800-plus quarries and asphalt plants within the UK as a whole.

"We expect many of the findings will be able to be implemented across all our sites – and others in the sector – as part of the industry's commitment to support the government's net zero ambitions, maximising the value for money of the BEIS funding."