What are the key takeaways from this In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen episode?

Key insights include: **European Housing Recovery:** Europe faces a shortage of approximately 10 million homes, but permit approvals have accelerated notably in the past two months across key markets. The EU's affordable housing plan aims to boost supply by streamlining permitting rules, signaling a near-term construction rebound.; **AI Predictive Maintenance:** Holcim deploys proprietary AI algorithms across cement factories averaging 1,000 by 500 meters to analyze operational data and flag equipment failure risks before they occur. This predictive approach enables planned shutdowns and optimized maintenance scheduling, targeting 200 million Swiss francs in net benefits by 2028.; **Waste-to-Energy Cost Strategy:** Holcim simultaneously reduces costs and CO2 emissions by accepting industrial waste materials, processing them into alternative fuel sources, and replacing traditional fossil fuels in cement production. This circular model generates revenue from waste intake while cutting both energy expenses and carbon output.

What did Miljan Gutovic discuss on In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen?

Miljan Gutovic, CEO of Holcim, one of the world's largest building materials companies, covers Europe's housing recovery, AI-driven operational savings targeting 200 million Swiss francs by 2028, and cement's path toward net-zero by 2050. Key topics include: **European Housing Recovery:** Europe faces a shortage of approximately 10 million homes, but permit approvals have accelerated notably in the past two months across key markets. The EU's affordable housing plan aims to boost supply by streamlining permitting rules, signaling a near-term construction rebound.; **AI Predictive Maintenance:** Holcim deploys proprietary AI algorithms across cement factories averaging 1,000 by 500 meters to analyze operational data and flag equipment failure risks before they occur. This predictive approach enables planned shutdowns and optimized maintenance scheduling, targeting 200 million Swiss francs in net benefits by 2028..

How long is this episode of In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen?

This episode is 10 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen

HIGHLIGHTS: Miljan Gutovic - CEO of Holcim

June 26, 2026

10 min episode · 2 min read

Miljan Gutovic

Episode

10 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Health & Wellness, Fundraising & VC, Leadership

AI-Generated Summary

Published Jun 26, 2026

Key Takeaways

✓European Housing Recovery: Europe faces a shortage of approximately 10 million homes, but permit approvals have accelerated notably in the past two months across key markets. The EU's affordable housing plan aims to boost supply by streamlining permitting rules, signaling a near-term construction rebound.
✓AI Predictive Maintenance: Holcim deploys proprietary AI algorithms across cement factories averaging 1,000 by 500 meters to analyze operational data and flag equipment failure risks before they occur. This predictive approach enables planned shutdowns and optimized maintenance scheduling, targeting 200 million Swiss francs in net benefits by 2028.
✓Waste-to-Energy Cost Strategy: Holcim simultaneously reduces costs and CO2 emissions by accepting industrial waste materials, processing them into alternative fuel sources, and replacing traditional fossil fuels in cement production. This circular model generates revenue from waste intake while cutting both energy expenses and carbon output.
✓Defense and Ukraine Reconstruction Opportunity: Rising European defense budgets will drive infrastructure spending on roads and rail networks, directly benefiting building materials suppliers. A potential end to the Ukraine conflict would additionally unlock large-scale reconstruction demand, with Holcim positioned through operations in Poland, Romania, Moldova, and Hungary.

What It Covers

Miljan Gutovic, CEO of Holcim, one of the world's largest building materials companies, covers Europe's housing recovery, AI-driven operational savings targeting 200 million Swiss francs by 2028, and cement's path toward net-zero by 2050.

Key Questions Answered

•European Housing Recovery: Europe faces a shortage of approximately 10 million homes, but permit approvals have accelerated notably in the past two months across key markets. The EU's affordable housing plan aims to boost supply by streamlining permitting rules, signaling a near-term construction rebound.
•AI Predictive Maintenance: Holcim deploys proprietary AI algorithms across cement factories averaging 1,000 by 500 meters to analyze operational data and flag equipment failure risks before they occur. This predictive approach enables planned shutdowns and optimized maintenance scheduling, targeting 200 million Swiss francs in net benefits by 2028.
•Waste-to-Energy Cost Strategy: Holcim simultaneously reduces costs and CO2 emissions by accepting industrial waste materials, processing them into alternative fuel sources, and replacing traditional fossil fuels in cement production. This circular model generates revenue from waste intake while cutting both energy expenses and carbon output.
•Defense and Ukraine Reconstruction Opportunity: Rising European defense budgets will drive infrastructure spending on roads and rail networks, directly benefiting building materials suppliers. A potential end to the Ukraine conflict would additionally unlock large-scale reconstruction demand, with Holcim positioned through operations in Poland, Romania, Moldova, and Hungary.

Notable Moment

Gutovic notes that cement production consumes more of any material globally than everything except water, with roughly 30 billion tons used annually — a scale that reframes cement as civilization's foundational resource, not a commodity.

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Episode Transcript

Hi, everybody. Tune in to this short version of the podcast, which we do every Friday. For the long version, tune in on Wednesdays. Hi, everyone. I'm Nicola Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund. And today, I'm joined by Miljan Gutovic, the CEO of Holzim. Holzim, one of the largest building material companies in the world. Cement, aggregates, concrete, the stuff that the world is literally built from. So if you walked into a building today, drove on a road, crossed the bridge, hey, Holzheim has probably been involved. And we own nearly 2% of the company. Jan, warm welcome. Pleasure to be here, Nikolai. And thank you for a warm introduction. Thanks for selling Holtsen. So most people don't realize how embedded Holtsen is in their daily lives. So in short, what do you guys do? So, basically, we are producing and supplying to our customers, building materials and building solutions that are used across built environment in buildings, in industry, in infrastructure. So the word is construction. And when you think about construction, you're probably thinking about concrete. And concrete is indeed one of the most essential materials. To put it in perspective, and maybe you will find this fascinating, after water, concrete is the second most consumed material on Earth. We we use approximately 30,000,000,000 tons of concrete every single year. So we can say it's actually a bedrock of modern civilization. But it's also it's also, I mean, it it's not like it's a very glorious sector. Right? So, but it's a sector which is transforming fast just now. So what is happening? Indeed. Beautiful times for the whole construction industry. And now I'll be talking to you as a civil engineer with PhD in material science. So this industry has been very conservative for many years, for many decades. Recently, we have gone through massive transformation. The keyword in our industry today and for Holstein is innovation and sustainability. This is Why did what what happened? Why why is this a sudden change? The pressure to build better, to build smarter, to build more efficient is coming from our customers, from all the different stakeholders. And that's why we have positioned today Holzim as a leader in innovative and sustainable building products. Europe is your biggest market. What are you seeing in Europe in terms of business activity? I would like to say that I am optimistic about Europe. Change is coming. What we are seeing in Europe, for example, there is a massive shortage of housing. There is a we are missing close to a 10,000,000 homes. But that million, that's been the case for some time and still building hasn't really taken off again. So what we are seeing at least since second half of last year, number of permits is coming through. Especially in the last two months, we have seen a very healthy, permitting approvals across all our key markets. This makes me confident that we will see …

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