Imerys
CASE STUDY · SAAS / AI INTEGRATION INFRASTRUCTURE · B2B · GLOBAL

Building the website for Imerys — bringing the world's leading minerals company to the surface, digitally

 A speculative strategic brief showing how Aximz Technologies would approach a global digital engagement for Imerys — the world’s leading supplier of mineral-based specialty solutions, with €3.6 billion in revenue, 12,400 employees across 40 countries, and a diverse portfolio serving industries from electric vehicles to aerospace to cosmetics.

 

Concept case study — This is a speculative portfolio piece demonstrating Aximz’s strategic capability for a brand of this scale and sector. It is not a commissioned or completed project.


  • BRAND

Imerys

  • INDUSTRY

Specialty Minerals / B2B

  • HQ

Paris, France

  • REVENUE (2024)

€3.6 billion

  • EMPLOYEES

12,400+

  • COUNTRIES

40+ / 230 sites

  • Global Website Strategy
  • UX Design & Redesign
  • Web Development
  • Brand Identity Refresh
  • Brand Guidelines
  • B2B Content Strategy
  • Technical & Deep SEO
  • Sustainability Communications
  • Multilingual Content
  • CMS Architecture
  • Investor Relations Design
  • Industry Application Pages
THE CHALLENGE

The invisible ingredient in thousands of everyday products — and fast-growing future markets

Founded in 1880 and headquartered in Paris, Imerys is the world’s leading supplier of mineral-based specialty solutions for industry. The company transforms minerals — talc, kaolin, perlite, graphite, diatomite, calcium carbonate, and more — into high- performance functional solutions that enable the products and processes of some of the world’s most demanding industries.

What makes Imerys uniquely challenging as a digital brief is the extraordinary breadth of its application: their minerals appear in EV battery anodes, rocket launchpad refractory materials, food-grade filtration systems, luxury cosmetics, architectural paints, semiconductor production, and sustainable construction products — often all at once.

Business at a glance

  • €3.6 billion group revenue (2024) — world #1 in mineral-based specialty solutions
  • 12,400 employees across 40 countries, 230 industrial sites
  • Founded 1880 — 140+ years of mineral science expertise
  • Listed on Euronext Paris (CAC Mid 60) — major shareholder Groupe Bruxelles Lambert
  • Operations across Europe, Americas, Asia-Pacific, and EMEA

Three core business segments

  • Performance Minerals — plastics, rubber, paints, coatings, filtration, paper & board, ceramics
  • Solutions for Refractory, Abrasives & Construction — iron & steel, aerospace, abrasives, building
  • Solutions for Energy Transition — graphite & carbon for EV batteries, mobile energy, high-purity alumina
THE BRIEF — WHAT WE'D SOLVE

The digital gaps behind a world-class industrial brand

Heidelberg Materials’ website must simultaneously serve institutional investors seeking financial performance data, construction professionals specifying materials, sustainability directors evaluating ESG credentials, procurement teams across 50 markets, and media and regulatory audiences tracking the company’s carbon transition.

That is an extraordinary range of needs to serve from a single digital platform — and the current site, while functional, leaves significant value on the table in terms of SEO discoverability, content depth, and user experience across its audience segments.

Digital experience gaps

  • Sustainability story — the most differentiating part of the brand — is buried in reports rather than woven through the site experience
  • Product and solutions pages lack depth for specifying professionals
  • Regional and country pages are inconsistent in depth, tone, and completeness
  • Investor relations section is functional but not competitive with peer DAX-listed
    companies
  • Mobile experience is underdeveloped for B2B research

SEO & content gaps

  • Low organic visibility for high-intent B2B queries around cement, aggregates,
    and sustainable building materials
  • evoZero® and carbon-captured cement are not yet ranking for the queries
    they should own
  • No structured data implementation — missing Organisation, Product, and
    FAQPage schema
  • Multilingual SEO is inconsistent — hreflang issues and thin content in non-
    English markets
  • Strategy 2030 and Transformation Accelerator lack dedicated, SEO-structured
    landing pages
BRAND IDENTITY — WHAT AXIMZ BUILT

"Your challenge, our solutions" — making that promise felt at every touchpoint

Imerys’s brand line — “Your challenge, our solutions” — is strategically precise: it positions the company as a problem-solver for the world’s hardest industrial challenges. But a brand line is only effective when the experience behind it delivers on the promise at every level.

Brand audit

Full audit of Imerys's digital brand across global and regional sites, investor aterials, sustainability reports, product datasheets, and trade show assets — mapping inconsistencies across 40+ markets.

Visual identity refresh

Refined visual system: typography with scientific precision and editorial depth, a colour language that spans industrial B2B and consumer-adjacent markets, and a photography direction that makes mineral science compelling.

Energy transition sub-brand

A dedicated visual identity for Imerys's Solutions for Energy Transition segment — communicating battery science and circular economy credentials with authority to EV, energy storage, and clean tech audiences.

Industry voice registers

Distinct tone and vocabulary registers for each of Imerys's 12 target industries — technical for engineers, strategic for procurement, innovative for R&D partners — all unified under one brand voice architecture.

Brand guidelines

A 60-page global brand guidelines document for internal teams, regional offices, and agency partners across 40+ countries — covering all digital, print, and trade show applications.

Brand guidelines

A scalable, accessible component library (WCAG 2.1 AA) engineered for Imerys's complexity — technical data tables, mineral product cards, application diagrams, and filterable industry indexes.

OUR APPROACH

How Aximz would approach this engagement — six phases

We structured the engagement as a phased delivery, ensuring each layer was validated before building on it. The result was a cohesive, SEO-optimised, content-rich global website — built to scale with Imerys’s continued international growth.

Discovery, audit & audience mapping

Full UX, content, and technical SEO audit across the global site and key regional pages. Audience mapping across 7 segments: R&D and formulation engineers, procurement managers, C-suite and strategy directors, institutional investors and ESG analysts, sustainability managers, innovation and partnership teams, and engineering talent.

Brand strategy & visual identity refresh

Brand audit across all digital and print touchpoints globally. Evolution of the visual identity: a refined typography system with scientific precision and editorial depth, a colour architecture that works across 12 industry contexts.

Global information architecture & industry SEO strategy

Full restructure of Imerys.com's IA around two primary discovery paths — by industry (12 verticals) and by mineral/product (50+ product families) — with a solutions-matching mechanism for R&D and procurement users.

UX design — industry-segmented, technically credible

Redesign of the global website with dual-path navigation: industry-led and product-led. Audience-segmented homepage with differentiated entry points for engineers, procurement, investors, and sustainability audiences.

Conversion copywriting & content strategy

Content strategy for 200+ pages spanning 12 industry application hubs, 50+ mineral and product family pages, a sustainability and decarbonisation hub, innovation editorial, and investor relations content.

Technical SEO, CMS architecture & global rollout

Technical SEO at enterprise scale — full schema markup across 200+ pages and 50+ product families, Core Web Vitals optimisation, multilingual sitemap architecture, and headless- compatible CMS with phased global rollout.

RESULTS & IMPACT

What success would look like at 90 days post-launch

Illustrative targets based on enterprise B2B benchmarks for global especialty chemicals and industrial materials companies undergoing strategic redesign. Concept projections — not guaranteed outcomes.

200+

Pages written

Technical B2B content

15+

Markets localised

Multilingual SEO framework

110%

Organic search traffic

Global 90-day uplift target

38%

Bounce rate

Industry application pages

5×

Energy transition hub visits

Via improved IA & SEO

97

Target PageSpeed

Desktop (Google)

250%

Bounce rate

Industry application pages

3.5×

Product page engagement

Scroll depth & time on page

SEO OPPORTUNITY — KEYWORD TARGETS

High-value industrial and energy transition queries Imerys should own

 

Based on competitive B2B SEO analysis across specialty minerals and energy transition markets. Target rankings Aximz would pursue through content depth, technical authority, and schema implementation.

CONTENT SCOPE

40+ pages across products, personas, migration, and resources

200+

Pages written globally

500+

Keywords researched & mapped

15+

Markets localised

12

Industry verticals covered

50+

Mineral product families

90+

Accessible UI components

Content coverage areas

 

Homepage · Company overview & 140-year heritage · Strategy & corporate governance · Managing Board · Investor relations · Sustainability hub · Solutions for Energy Transition hub · Industry hubs: Electric Vehicles, Aerospace & Defence, Construction & Infrastructure, Paints & Coatings, Plastics & Rubber, Paper & Board, Iron & Steel, Filtration & Food, Ceramics, Consumer Goods & Cosmetics, Pharmaceuticals, Agriculture · Mineral product families: Talc, Kaolin, Calcium Carbonate, Graphite & Carbon, Perlite, Diatomite, Alumina, Refractory minerals, Abrasives · Innovation editorial ·Newsroom & press releases · Careers & employer brand · Regional pages: France, Germany, USA, UK, India, China, Brazil and 8+ others

Client Voice

What the Imerys team said

“Imerys minerals are in rocket launchpads, EV batteries, luxury cosmetics, and the food you filter. A company whose expertise spans that range deserves a digital platform that makes every industry feel like it’s the only one — and every engineer feel like the product was made for them.”

 

— Aximz Technologies — on what a Heidelberg Materials engagement would mean to us

FULL DELIVERABLES

Everything a full Aximz engagement would deliver

Strategy & Research

  • Full global UX and SEO audit with competitor benchmarking across 5 specialty minerals peers
  • 7 audience persona documents: R&D engineers, procurement managers, C-suite, investors, sustainability directors, innovation partners, and talent
  • Full information architecture: sitemap, URL structure, and internal linking map
  • 500+ keyword research and multilingual SEO mapping across 12 industry verticals

Design & Content

  • Brand voice guide and editorial style manual for in-house team
  • 200+ pages of original SEO-optimised content written and published
  • 90+ WCAG 2.1 AA accessible UI components — scalable global design system
  • 60-page brand guidelines for global distribution

Development & Technical

  • Full website development — responsive, accessible, WCAG 2.1 AA compliant
  • Headless-compatible CMS setup with modular page builder
  • Technical SEO implementation: schema, hreflang, sitemaps, canonicals, robots.txt
  • Core Web Vitals optimisation — LCP, CLS, FID all in "Good" range

Launch & Support

  • QA across 24 device and browser configurations
  • Phased global rollout: core site → priority industry verticals → full regional deployment
  • CMS training sessions and full documentation for internal team
  • 90-day post-launch global SEO monitoring report with keyword tracking