Fire protection boards spend their working life hidden behind cladding, ceilings and steelwork, which makes them easy to forget. Embodied carbon calculations don't skip them, though. In October 2026, Etex Building Performance International published its first Environmental Product Declarations under this company profile. That puts carbon data for some of the best-known boards in passive fire protection into the same directories specifiers search every day. Congratulations to the team.
What went live in October
The debut has three EPDs, all issued by EPD Hub under the EPD Hub Core PCR (version 1.1). All three are valid until October 2031. The scope is broader than the count suggests, because two of the three are family declarations:
- PROMATECT-LS, a single-product EPD for a calcium silicate board made with cement and mineral fillers, mainly used in interior applications
- Mineral bound fire protective boards, one family EPD covering PROMATECT-100, PROMATECT-200, PROMATECT-250 and PROMAXON-Typ A
- Medium density calcium silicate fire protective boards, a second family EPD covering PROMATECT-L, PROMATECT-L500, PROMATECT-AD and VERMICULUX-S
That makes nine named products in three documents. The EC3 listings don't name an outside LCA developer or consultant for these declarations. Etex's other EPDs in the database often list Etex Group itself as the developer, which suggests the LCA work may have been done in-house.
Who Etex is and why these boards matter
Etex is a Belgian building materials group. Its brands include Siniat plasterboard, Equitone facades and Promat, the passive fire protection brand behind these boards. Promat products protect structural steel, form fire-rated partitions and ceilings, and line ducts and shafts. Their buyers are mostly fire engineers, specialist installers and the architects who coordinate them. We've covered the group's wider portfolio in our Etex Group EPD coverage snapshot.
The timing works for European markets. The revised EU Construction Products Regulation has applied to most construction products since January 2026 (EU CPR 2024/3110, 2024). Denmark has also cut its limit for new buildings to an average of 7.1 kg CO2e/m²/year (BR18, 2025). When every board in a wall build-up counts toward a hard limit, a verified product-specific number is worth more than a generic default with a safety margin added on top.
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A clean A2 baseline for familiar products
These products aren't new to environmental reporting. Promat's own EPD library still lists an older IBU declaration for the PROMATECT-L family, dated November 2021. Sister company Etex France Building Performance holds French FDES for PROMATECT-100 and PROMATECT-L500 that run to April 2027 and use the older EN 15804+A1 rules.
The October EPDs give these product families fresh declarations valid well into the next decade. That matters because a five-year validity window closes quietly. A spec team that finds an expired PDF in a tender pack may simply move to an alternative. Renewing before that happens is a bit like changing the smoke alarm battery before it starts chirping at 3 a.m.
How the competition stacks up
We checked EC3 for the manufacturers most likely to compete with Promat for the same wall, ceiling or steelwork:
- Skamol has a current EPD for its calcium silicate plates through EPD Danmark, valid until February 2028. Its portfolio leans toward stove and industrial insulation, but it is the closest like-for-like calcium silicate competitor.
- ROCKWOOL Limited has an EPD for SP Firestop EN, a stone wool passive fire protection panel, valid until July 2031.
- Knauf UK/I has an EPD for its gypsum-based Knauf Fire Panel 15 mm that expires in January 2027, only a few months away.
- Morgan Advanced Materials covers its FireMaster fire-rated blankets with an EPD valid until September 2028.
We didn't find a current EPD for James Hardie's Aestuver fire protection boards among the James Hardie and fermacell profiles we checked. For a specifier comparing calcium silicate fire boards, that leaves a gap that Promat's broader coverage now fills.
Catching up and getting ahead at the same time
This debut puts Etex Building Performance International in two positions at once. Against Skamol and ROCKWOOL, it closes the gap. Both already had verified data, and Promat now matches them while covering more board grades than either.
Against competitors whose fire boards have no current EPD, or whose declarations expire soon, Promat has a lead. A product without an EPD often gets modelled with conservative default values, sometimes with an extra penalty percentage added. Fire protection is chosen on performance first, so the carbon data rarely wins a spec by itself. What it does is keep the board from being swapped out late when a project is chasing a carbon target, which is a sale nobody sees being lost.
Visibility is the last step
The new EPDs already appear in EC3 roughly ten days after issue, which is quick by industry standards. Promat also runs a well-organised EPD library on its website. When we checked, though, the October EPD Hub declarations didn't seem to be listed there yet, and the 2021 IBU version still represented the PROMATECT-L family.
We recommend adding the new documents, with clear validity dates, so that specifiers going directly to the brand don't download the older file. Architects who can't find a current EPD in a few clicks will often assume there isn't one.
The bigger picture
Three documents covering nine boards is an efficient way to start, and the family structure leaves room to add more products as the program expands. The data is verified, it sits in the right directories and it has five years of validity ahead of it. The remaining step is to make sure sales teams and the website are using the new files, so Promat's fire protection boards are easy to find as carbon limits tighten accross Europe.
