Innovative producers are reinventing flooring category by category. Now it's the turn of concrete.
Concrete flooring is as old as civilisation itself. And the production and installation are fundamentally the same now as they were then. It's messy, time consuming and can be pretty disruptive because it takes a long time to set. This makes concrete floors especially impractical in fast-track commercial projects and retrofits.
Concrete is made by adding sand and gravel to cement, whisking the mixture with water and pouring it into moulds before it dries. Making cement is the most carbon-intensive part: it involves using fossil fuels to heat a mixture of limestone and clay to more than 1,400  °C in a kiln.
As a result, concrete has a high carbon footprint giving a typical concrete floor a global warming potential in excess of 250 kg CO2 / m2. Reducing the use of concrete and replacing it with much lower carbon alternatives is a necessary component of the drive to Net Zero Carbon construction.
Installing a traditional polished concrete floor is a complex job. It’s a multi-stage process taking place over a number of days and requiring specialist skills and equipment. The final polish and seal can’t be carried out for at least a month. All in all, it’s a labour-intensive and very expensive process.
Bio Concrete
Bio Concrete makes life simple. Liquid components arrive in tins, are mixed onsite and applied as a screed around 2mm thick. This cures in around 24 hours to a finish which is seamless like polished concrete but remains flexible so it’s much more forgiving.
Nonetheless, it’s very durable - suitable for the busiest of commercial spaces - and is great on fire safety (B-rated) and slip (up to R11). It’s highly resistant to staining (without any additional seal or treatment) and easy to maintain.
These factors make Bio Concrete a perfect product for commercial retrofits or for places where traditional concrete is not practical.
Cleaner & Greener
The ingredients of Bio Concrete could not be simpler - vegetable oils, chalk, cement dust and natural pigments. It’s therefore free of any of the potentially harmful chemicals that are present in many other types of flooring, as designated in the ILFI Red List. It contains around 50% recycled content and it can be recycled itself at the end of life (although it will last for decades).
Bio Concrete represents a new generation of innovative, organic-based formulations that offer sustainable alternatives to traditional building materials. By delivering the look of polished concrete without the costs and complexities, it opens up a world of design possibilities.
