"Every 20 kilometres or so, you'll find a Bétons Feidt concrete plant". For CEO Ferd Feidt, the family business, which was founded in Luxembourg in the 1950s under the name Feidt Frères, has turned certain challenges into its strength. It’s the key to longevity and success. Recognisable by its blue and white machines, the company was officially founded in 1969, and now has 14 sites in three countries. This territorial coverage is essential, given that ready-mix concrete must be used within 90 minutes of production. Bétons Feidt has made this its strength. "We have two main activities: ready-mix concrete and prefabrication. For ready-mix concrete, proximity to construction sites is a very important factor. So we've always made sure we have a network, a bit like petrol stations", said Feidt, who employs 381 people in the three countries.

It even obtains its pebbles through another company in its group, Carrières Feidt, which has two sites. "This proximity is a very important factor in our business. And that's what makes us so strong: being able to work in compliance with the norms and standards of each country". Another of the company's strengths is its ability to be present in the various fields of application of concrete, whether for building bridges or buildings. "Depending on the application, the concrete will perform differently. We also have concrete fillers", he stated.

These "performances" of concrete are the subject of innovations within the company, with a greener orientation. Greener because today, most of the CO2 emissions linked to cement and concrete result from the use of clinker, the main ingredient in traditional cement.

New hybrid cements and concretes

"This means reducing the amount of clinker used in cement, which generates a very substantial quantity of CO2, with an impact of 7 to 8% on global CO2 emissions. But we also have to realise that concrete is still very important to the development of our societies. We are therefore working to produce concretes that better meet sustainability criteria. These are efforts that both cement and concrete manufacturers need to make," said Feidt.

Even so, Luxembourg has a small head start in this area. "Here, we have a tradition of using slag," says the CEO. This is another raw material used in the manufacture of cement, consisting of vitrified calcium and magnesium silicates obtained by rapid cooling of molten slag, which is separated during the production of cast iron in a blast furnace. "Slag requires less energy," he added. Bétons Feidt uses a new cement from Esch, "which will not be usable everywhere because it is less resistant to salt, but which is very suitable for interior building structures, for example". He also cited concretes made from wood chips or miscanthus (elephant grass) as interesting alternatives. These are innovative models that the company is committed to developing as thoroughly as possible. "We are positioning ourselves on these hybrid models, and have taken on staff to develop new concepts".

To build more sustainably, Feidt is also banking on concrete recycling and the circular economy. "We have already experimented with this at the Lycée Michel-Lucius. But for this to be possible, this circular logic has to start at the design stage, by already planning which materials will be used and can be taken back and reused." According to Michel-Lucius, this logic can and should be applied to many construction sites.

But does building greener mean building more expensively? Not necessarily, according to Feidt. "There are different factors depending on the materials used. When we use cement, which produces CO2, we have to offset it in any case via the certificates introduced at European level. Moreover, recycling concrete is also a resource-intensive process: you have to demolish and then sort the materials very precisely before you can make concrete again. So yes, recycled concrete does have an additional cost, but I believe that it is absolutely surmountable, and it should not make us lose sight of the importance of this challenge for our future", argued Feidt, who believes that it is not really possible to do without concrete entirely, "if only for reasons of fire safety, for example".

Also linked to sustainability is the reduction of CO2 emissions in the transport of concrete. "We transport huge quantities. The electrification of the mobile fleet is a big issue for us. We were the first to have prototypes of the very first electric concrete mixers in Europe, in collaboration with Liebherr. A great innovation. Hydrogen could also be a solution. But in my opinion, the future will lie in combined and optimised systems. In any case, all these questions will arise in the context of the CSRD directive, which will force companies to carry out an ecological audit and find solutions.”

A 40% drop in production volume

In terms of sustainability, Bétons Feidt is faced with a number of challenges that must be combined with the specific characteristics of the Luxembourg market. “If we have to accommodate a million people in the future, we will have to house them and build the necessary infrastructure. The tramway, which was a very important project for us, has also changed a lot of things for people here.”

Another challenge will be the workforce, particularly "when the entire generation of Portuguese retires and 30% of the construction workforce is lost". The company is closely linked to the construction sector, and is affected by fluctuations in activity, with a negative impact of around 40% on volumes produced. "But this crisis also offers new opportunities to do better, to reposition ourselves. Faced with the labour challenge, I'm convinced that we'll be moving more and more towards prefabricated systems, machined and then assembled on site. This will make it possible to have increasingly efficient, predefined and detailed systems.” This will enable faster and more flexible construction.

"In Luxembourg, we are in a market where there is enormous concentration. You could compare the country to Dubai in its heyday. We are one of the biggest consumers of concrete, which is the second most widely used material in the world after water," said Feidt.

“We need to review our standards”

But for the CEO of Bétons Feidt, these innovations alone will not suffice. "What we need for the future is to use concrete in a more intelligent, optimised way. To reduce concrete consumption by around 30%. To achieve this, we need to move towards more complex structures, using higher performance concretes. We've already seen projects like the National Library that take this approach," he said. Feidt, an architect by training, advocates a new impetus in design, "a design that must be done in a more intelligent way, at the level of building information modelling (BIM), according to the specific needs of those who will occupy the building," he argued. In his view, the arrival of the new generations in the sector will contribute to a paradigm shift in terms of optimising buildings, and especially the size of floor space.

"We will always be obliged to build roofs over people's heads. And that's not guaranteed for the moment... We need to review our standards today, particularly the size of flats. Housing takes up too much space. We need to adapt our urban concepts to new needs. We can't renew everything overnight, but we're going to have to be a bit more courageous in saying that a housing unit for someone who comes from abroad and works in Luxembourg can't cost €2,400" in rent.

Read the original French version of this interview