How it's madeMimmik Tile

Mimmik Tile is the first-ever tile that grows with the help of bacteria, now produced on an industrial scale. It's the solution to drastically reduce your carbon footprint.

Our partner Biomason learnt how nature grows through one of its most robust and enduring structures: coral. Taking inspiration from marine ecosystems, Biomason is on a path to greatly minimise carbon emissions in the production of building materials.

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Biomimicry - Copying Nature

Concrete is everywhere. In our floors, our walls, and our cities. It is the second most consumed material on earth, after water. And the cement that binds it is responsible for 8% of all global CO₂ emissions. The search for a better way has never been more urgent or more necessary.

StoneCycling + Biomason BioBasedTile Process

The most promising answers are coming from an unlikely place: nature itself. Approximately 500 million years ago, coral reefs developed one of the most durable structures on earth. No furnaces. No fossil fuels. Just bacteria, carbon, and time.

Biomimicry in its most literal form, replicating nature's process rather than its shape, became the foundation of Biomason. They spent more than a decade translating coral-inspired chemistry into a building material a factory could produce at scale.

The result is a technology called Zymecrete™. Bacteria are introduced to a mixture of sand and aggregate. Once fed, they become microscopic production plants binding carbon and calcium into crystalline calcium carbonate. No kilns. No calcination. No fossil fuels. Just aggregate, bacteria, and the food that wakes them up.

Unlike traditional cement (fired at 1400°C), no limestone is burnt and no fossil fuels are needed to form the binder. The bacteria do that work at ambient temperature, resulting in at least 60% fewer emissions than traditional cement.

Full strength is reached in roughly 40 hours, compared to the 28 days conventional concrete needs to cure.

Meet the Bacteria behind the Mimmik Tile | FRONT Materials

From a spare-bedroom lab to a factory floor in Denmark. A living technology, finally ready to build with. Projects have already been completed in Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

Microbial Induced Carbonate Precipitation

The process used by Biomason is called MICP, or Microbial Induced Carbonate Precipitation: naturally occurring bacteria take a source of carbon and calcium and crystallise them into calcium carbonate, the same mineral that makes a reef hard, dense, and enduring.

And because the crystals form clear rather than grey, the binder is effectively translucent: the colour of the finished tile comes from the aggregate and sand.

The factory in Denmark currently produces 20,000 square metres a year, with the capacity to grow to 500,000 and well beyond. To turn this technology into measurable impact at the scale of the industry, more buildings need to be made of it, so get in touch with your projects where Mimmik Tile could be a good fit!

From Bacteria to Floor Tile

Biocement®: The Cement Manufacturing Process Revolutionized with Biotechnology

Sand, aggregate, and living bacteria are brought together in the first step to growing a new kind of building material from the inside out.

At the microscopic scale, the bacteria activate and begin laying the groundwork for what comes next.

Fed with nutrients, the bacteria begin converting it into calcium carbonate — the same mineral that makes a coral reef hard, dense, and enduring.

As the biological process continues, new mineral bonds develop between particles, and the structure begins to strengthen from within.

The calcium carbonate bonds keep building, consolidating the structure and steadily increasing its strength. No kilns, no heat, no fossil fuels required.

As more bonds form, the biocementation grows denser and the structure becomes continuous — encapsulating each grain of sand and aggregate from the inside out.

After roughly 40 hours, a solid crystalline calcium carbonate matrix holds the material together. A tile grown by bacteria, is now ready to be walked on by people.

Mimmik Tile holds up under daily use, meets the same European standards as conventional tiles, and looks and feels like any high-quality floor.

    We’re looking forward to creating beautiful and sustainable buildings together! 

  

World's Largest Installation of Biocement® to Date at Helix Lab in Denmark || StoneCycling X Biomason

Mimmik Tile Flooring at Parel in de Polder in the Netherlands

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Mimmik Tile Flooring at Helix Lab in Denmark