Kuster Concrete Polish delivers circular floor for CityHub 

On the circular business park Ambachtsezoom in Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht, a new CityHub of DHL eCommerce has recently been realized. A special part of this project is the office floor, which was carried out by Kuster Betonpolish. This floor has been treated according to a method that is in line with the circular ambitions of the business park.

Kuster Concrete Polish applies a technique in which concrete floors are mechanically polished and then compacted by impregnating them with a silicate-based hardener. This creates a hard, dense and liquid-proof floor without dust formation that is easy to clean. “With our method, pure concrete becomes an aesthetically pleasing utility floor with extremely long service life - without adding finishing coats,” explains owner Marcel Kuster. “The latter is important for circularity. All other floor finishes, such as cast floors, coatings or claddings, wear out over time and then have to be replaced, leave adhesive or sticky layers and make it difficult to reuse the concrete.”

Applied in Ambachtsezoom

For these reasons, the Dordrecht-based company was asked for the office floor of DHL eCommerce's new CityHub in Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht. The CityHub was realized at business park Ambachtsezoom. That business park was developed according to Cradle-to-Cradle principles and focuses on closed cycles for energy, water and materials. The circular requirements at the park were drawn from the Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht Municipality's Circular Handbook and are secured by consultancy Rendemint. “Rendemint guides governments in particular in the transition from linear to circular economy, including training, product research and procurement guidance,” explains René de Klerk. As a consultant at Rendemint, he has been involved in the development of Ambachtsezoom from the beginning. He explains, “Ambachtsezoom is a special project. Companies may only purchase and build on a plot here if they meet predefined circular requirements. To this end, together with the municipality of Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht, we have drawn up a set of eight concrete requirements. We guide entrepreneurs in applying them and monitor the construction process from procurement to on-site audits and the delivery of an as-built materials passport. In this way we ensure that these requirements are actually met.”

Circular floor

“We impregnated the floor of the CityHub office at this business park with silicates,” Kuster says. “The floor was compacted and polished to make it more aesthetically pleasing permanently.” According to De Klerk, this method is a remarkable solution: “Normally, you add something to a concrete floor to make it suitable as a user floor, such as carpet, parquet or tiles. Those materials wear out and then have to be removed and often end up as waste. In wet areas, people thereby choose to glue the materials to the subfloor, which makes reuse difficult. The beauty of this floor now is that the concrete floor has only been worked, not coated. Polishing and compacting creates an aesthetic, wear-resistant floor without additional materials. This actually makes it very long-lasting and completely reusable. After all, nothing has been changed to the concrete, so it can be reused if desired.” De Klerk concludes, “Perhaps this is one of the most circular solutions we see at this business park.”