Business model canvases for precast concrete element reuse

This report presents business model canvases (BMCs) for precast concrete element reuse developed in the ReCreate project. The BMCs are a result of structured analyses of ReCreate’s pilot projects’ business models and value creation mechanisms. Their purpose is to provide profound understanding on how concrete reuse businesses are construed on system, company, and process levels. These insights can help companies and value chains to improve their business models, e.g., by identifying increased value creation potential and by understanding of potential cost-efficiency pitfalls to address.

The ReCreate project (funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 under grant agreement no 958 200) studies the construction industry’s possibilities to transition from virgin concrete production and aggregate recycling into reuse of precast elements. This could potentially reduce the product phase carbon footprint by more than 90%. However, the reuse of precast concrete elements is still only rarely seen as economically viable. This is due to, among other things, the perceived difficulty of deconstructing elements as intact, and it is also impacted by the high cost-effectiveness of business-as-usual virgin production processes. Therefore, one of ReCreate’s main objectives is to demonstrate the value and profitability potential of the reuse model, as well as to develop scalable business models. The investigation is facilitated by the ReCreate consortium’s four pilot projects in Finland, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands. Each of the pilots involve a leading company partner which carries out the practical implementation.

The current deliverable’s objective is to provide business-relevant understanding for companies aspiring to engage in the reuse of precast concrete elements. The knowledge is structured in the levels of the whole value chain (system), individual company roles, and process stages, and it is presented in the form of BMCs. The analysis concludes that although element reuse entails multiple new high-value processes and thus creates attractive business for involved companies, labour costs from time-intensive deconstruction and component handling remain a major profitability barrier. To scale up reuse in the industry, the creation of new marketplaces for reuse elements by either existing or new value chain actors could play a key role. Lastly, companies can divide responsibilities in the reuse value chain in various ways, and vertical integration of different process stages from deconstruction to reuse has the potential to bring about business benefits regarding cost-efficiency and market creation.