Imerys Just Acquired a High-Purity Calcined Kaolin Business and Launched an Eco-Friendly Ceramics Line in the Same Year

In March 2025, Imerys acquired Cimbar Performance Minerals to deepen its calcined kaolin portfolio for paper and coatings. In August 2025, it launched a new eco-friendly kaolin line for ceramics. Two moves, one strategic imperative: own the high-value end of the kaolinite market before competitors catch up.

There is a mineral that has been dug from the earth for more than a thousand years. The Chinese called it Gaoling – high ridge clay. It was the secret ingredient in Song Dynasty porcelain. It was porcelain’s white, translucent brilliance that European royalty spent centuries and fortunes trying to replicate.

Today, that same mineral – kaolinite – is inside the paper this text might be printed on, the paint on the walls of a hospital, the fiberglass in a wind turbine blade, and the ceramic tiles on hundreds of millions of floors worldwide.

And Imerys, the French specialty minerals company, is moving fast to ensure it sits at the premium end of every one of those applications.

The Global Kaolinite Market, valued at USD 4.40 billion in 2025 and projected to reach USD 6.12 billion by 2032 at a CAGR of 4.4%, per Maximize Market Research, is being reshaped by two forces simultaneously: the demand for higher-performance mineral grades and the pressure to produce them sustainably. Imerys is engineering its product portfolio to capture both.

The Cimbar Acquisition: Locking In Calcined Kaolin Capability

In March 2025, Imerys announced the acquisition of Cimbar Performance Minerals, a U.S.-based producer of high-purity calcined kaolin products used in paper and coatings applications.

The strategic logic is precise. Calcined kaolin – produced by heating hydrous kaolin to remove hydroxyl groups and create an anhydrous structure – delivers significantly higher brightness, improved opacity, and better ink receptivity than standard hydrous grades. These properties make it the preferred choice for premium coated paper, digital printing substrates, and specialty coatings markets that command premium pricing.

By acquiring Cimbar, Imerys expands:

• Its calcined kaolin production capacity specifically targeting the high-brightness paper and coatings segments
• Its North American manufacturing footprint reducing supply chain complexity for U.S. paper producers
• Its specialty mineral portfolio depth enabling bundled solutions across hydrous, calcined, and surface-treated grades

MMR Insight: The Cimbar acquisition is not about volume. It is about pricing power – specifically, the ability to serve the premium paper and coatings segments that pay a significant per-tonne premium over standard industrial kaolin grades.

Eco-Friendly Ceramics Kaolin: Meeting the Sustainability Mandate

In August 2025, Imerys launched a new line of eco-friendly kaolin products specifically designed for the ceramics industry, deploying first in the UK and France markets before global rollout.

The ceramics industry is under increasing regulatory and consumer pressure to reduce its environmental footprint. Kiln energy consumption, CO2 emissions from firing processes, and raw material sourcing transparency are all under scrutiny. Imerys’ eco-friendly kaolin grades are engineered to address these pressure points:

• Lower firing temperatures required, reducing kiln energy consumption and associated CO2 emissions per tonne of ceramic output
• Verified sustainable sourcing credentials that ceramics manufacturers can pass through to their own sustainability disclosures
• Consistent high-whiteness performance that meets the aesthetic standards of premium sanitaryware and tile applications without compromise

Imerys leads the European kaolin sector with 14 processing sites across the continent, making it uniquely positioned to serve the ceramics hubs in Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and the UK.

Final Take

The kaolinite market has always rewarded scale and consistency. Imerys has both. But the market of the next decade will also reward sustainability credentials, premium-grade specialisation, and the ability to serve customers across multiple applications simultaneously.

With the Cimbar acquisition deepening its calcined capability and the eco-friendly ceramics launch expanding its sustainability credentials, Imerys is positioning itself for the premium tier of a USD 6.12 billion market – the tier that grows fastest and competes least on price.