University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

Precase Concrete Products and The UK Industry's Progress
on Sustainability
Precast concrete products are made in factories, transported to sites or cast on
construction sites but remote from their last position or location (Clarke and Glass,
2008). In terms of products, precast concrete products range from:
“small hydraulically pressed items mass produced in highly automated
factories, such as concrete bricks, paving and roof tiles, to larger mass
produced items such as pipes, piles and floor beams, and individual
structural units manufactured to specific engineering and architectural
requirements” (Holton, 2008).
Precast products are manufactured and produced to the highest quality standards; the
process of manufacture involves a combination of both skilled labour and automated
processes. Precast concrete elements are well known globally as established methods
of construction with flexibility and variety (Concrete Centre and British Precast,
2007). Precast concrete products help to shape the built environment through the
provision of building envelopes, supporting structures and services for public and
private housing, industrial and institutional buildings, retail and commercial
buildings. The UK precast concrete industry’s roots can be traced at the end of the
19th century when entrepreneurial engineers and builders realised the importance of
high quality and the economic advantages offered by casting concrete with the use of
machines (Clarke, 2003). Today in the UK, precast concrete production stands at
over 36 million tonnes of products annually, worth in excess of £2.3 billion (Holton,
2008).
There are over 800 precast concrete companies in the UK (Sustainable Concrete,
2009) with around 23,000 employees (BIBM, 2008) and more in the upstream and
downstream sector of the UK economy. This forms part of the wider construction
industry which employs 7% of the UK population (BCA, 2006) and accounts for 8%
of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (BERR, 2008). The precast concrete industry in
the UK is an important sector of the UK construction products industry and by
extension the construction industry, which includes building, civil engineering,
construction materials and products, and associated services (Holton et.al, 2008).
According to the Construction Products Association (CPA), the largest amongst the
four different, but related, activities is the construction materials and products, which
has a total annual turnover of more than £40 billion (CPA, 2009).
The British Precast Concrete Federation (BPCF), the umbrella body for the UK
precast concrete industry, devised a sustainability programme “More from Less” in
2004 to address the sustainability issues and activities of the industry. Still ongoing,
the programme was purposefully aimed at measuring, improving, promoting and
boosting the environmental, social and economic credentials of precast concrete
products in the UK. As a result, a sector sustainability strategy was developed and
implemented to move the precast concrete industry forward (Holton et. al., 2009) and
help the precast concrete industry better position its future profitability and
competiveness (Holton, 2006). That said, according to (Wolschner et al., 2008), the
precast concrete industry depends more broadly on its suppliers’ environmental
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