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BASF Touts Sustainability, Efficiency Benefits of Construction Solutions in New Campaign

Increasing economic benefits while reducing global-warming potential: How products from BASF’s Master Builders Solutions® range help achieve this is the focus of the new Europe-wide campaign, “Quantified Sustainable Benefits – Reduce your Footprint and Boost Your Bottom Line.” Through a series of ads and a dedicated website, BASF’s Master Builders Solutions experts, together with European customers, present selected cases that demonstrate how superior chemistry enables customers to increase their productivity while decreasing their operational costs and carbon footprint.

By Sustainable Brands | Published 7 years ago | About a 3 minute read

Increasing economic benefits while reducing global-warming potential: How products from BASF’s Master Builders Solutions® range help achieve this is the focus of the new Europe-wide campaign, “Quantified Sustainable Benefits – Reduce your Footprint and Boost Your Bottom Line.” Through a series of ads and a dedicated website, BASF’s Master Builders Solutions experts, together with European customers, present selected cases that demonstrate how superior chemistry enables customers to increase their productivity while decreasing their operational costs and carbon footprint. Externally validated evaluation tools, such as BASF’s Eco-Efficiency Analysis and Life Cycle Analyzer, quantify the obtained benefits.

Master Builders Solutions is BASF’s brand of advanced chemical solutions for construction. The campaign extols the virtues of several of the products, including Master X-Seed - an advanced hardening accelerator that is added to concrete mix – with which German precast manufacturer fdu Betonwerke achieved a 50 percent reduction in concrete hardening time. The crystals incorporated in the admixture improve the early strength of the concrete, which enables fdu to reduce the energy-intensive heat treatment of the fresh concrete, reducing production energy costs by up to 15 percent per site.

“The formworks for concrete elements usually have to remain in the heat chamber for twelve hours to harden. That is time-, energy- and cost- intensive,” explains Thomas Beike, Managing Director at fdu Betonwerke. “Through the use of Master X-Seed, we have reduced curing time from twelve to six hours. The elements can be demolded earlier to be delivered to the construction sites much faster. The CO2 footprint has also been reduced significantly.”

Another customer testimonial comes from Spain: The proximity of Barcelona’s Fundació Joan Miró museum to the Mediterranean Sea caused serious corrosion damage to the steel-reinforced concrete structures over the years. Instead of relying on conventional repair methods, which would have required closing the museum for extended periods of time, Fran Talavera, project manager of the Fundació Joan Miró refurbishment project, opted for MasterProtect 8000 CI, a corrosion-protection product.

“Application of MasterProtect 8000 CI was surprisingly easy – with remarkable results.” Talavera says. At the Fundació Joan Miró, renovation costs remained approximately 60 percent below the costs for a complete refurbishment, and downtime was reduced by 70 percent. Moreover, the corrosion protection significantly extended the time between renovation cycles, resulting in additional substantial savings over the service life of the building.

These and other examples of more efficient use of resources, an improved life cycle assessment, and significant cost reductions thanks to Master Builders Solutions products for the construction industry are available on the campaign website. The campaign is also featured across the industry’s leading trade journals and online portals and will be presented at trade fairs for construction across Europe within 2017.

From additives to the materials themselves: Last year the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program gave unprecedented recognition to two products that are raising the bar for building materials. The Bark House® poplar shingle and wall panel from Highland Craftsmen Inc. became the first product to meet the Platinum requirements across all five Cradle to Cradle certification categories: material health, material reutilization, renewable energy and carbon management, water stewardship, and social fairness; while Tarkett’s iQ One became the first homogenous flooring product to earn Gold-level certification.