Dr. Helmut Leibinger

Head of Project Management at SCHWENK Zement

Speaker

Dr. Dipl.-Ing. Helmut Leibinger, EMBA HSG, is Head of Project Management within the New Technologies department at SCHWENK Zement (since February 2025). He leads strategic decarbonization and innovation programs with a strong focus on industrial-scale delivery - most notably CO₂ capture initiatives, including the Brocēni carbon capture project (Latvia) and the development of a dedicated pilot testing base to validate state-of-the-art CO₂ capture technologies under real plant conditions.

He holds a PhD in Process Engineering from TU Wien, Austria, and an Executive MBA from the University of St. Gallen (HSG), Switzerland, and brings more than two decades of experience in international plant engineering and the transformation of cement production. He began his career at Scheuch Group in global plant engineering and joined Rohrdorfer Zement in 2006, where he headed the Technical Department.

Most recently, he served as Managing Director of Net Zero Emission Labs GmbH (founded in January 2023), a start-up-like innovation unit created to accelerate cement decarbonization. In this role, he led a team of 30+ highly motivated young engineers and translated net-zero ambitions into robust, implementable industrial programs.