Sustainability is in the DNA

Semi-paved areas make important contribution to sustainability

When it comes to Circular and Sustainable Road Construction, we immediately look to Koers of Hoogersmilde. The company even derives its history of existence from it. More than a hundred years after the company was founded, the Koers mix semi-paved surfaces make a significant contribution to making public spaces more sustainable.

The origins of circular construction date back to the previous generation when brothers Frits Koers and Joop Koers bought a used rubble crusher to use it to make yard paving from broken rubble. Even then they were thinking about reusing material and coming up with a useful application for it. Since then, developments in the field of circularity and especially sustainability within the company have always been the guiding principles for further development of the products.

Generation Change

Especially with the generational change in the 1990s, sustainability was zoomed in on. With increased environmental requirements and the purchase of our own screening plant, the origin and composition of products received increasing attention. "We focused on recycling and product development. We started seeing waste materials as raw materials: we bring them our way, process them into new products and market them. We didn't use the word sustainability back then, but in fact we were already concerned with it," Klaas Koers said of the early years of the search for the most sustainable production process possible.

Laboratory

In 1997, the company built its first in-house mixing plant based on the experience up to that time. It had become increasingly important to have quality control at one's fingertips, so at that time an in-house company laboratory was set up. Klaas Koers: "Soon we realized that in our company everything revolved around materials knowledge." Since then, the knowledge and experience in the field of sustainable semi-paving at Koers has grown enormously and the company has become a specialist in this field.

The Koersmix semi-hardenings that can be used for bicycle and pedestrian paths, parking lots and roads are still made largely from recycled material that is crushed, washed and sieved beforehand. Then, based on a unique composition, a homogeneous product is produced for each Koersmix that is distinguished by a high degree of self-healing ability, high erosion resistance and good bearing capacity.

Water permeability

Thanks to the permeability of the Koersmix -which ensures that trees and plants can receive sufficient water- or the water buffer that the Koersmix semi-paving forms -due to its water-storage properties- the Koersmixes make an important contribution to the sustainable design of public spaces. In addition, the Coarse Mixes help combat heat stress because the Coarse Mix heats up much less than asphalt, for example. An additional advantage is that the application of the Boerenmixes on bicycle paths and footpaths in nature reserves saves the lives of many amphibians and snakes.

In addition to the aforementioned advantages, Koersmixes are low-maintenance, wheelchair-friendly, do not crack under the influence of tree roots, for example, and have less trouble with weed ingrowth. As a result, the use of herbicides can immediately be drastically reduced, which again has a positive effect on the environment.

Solar Panels

The search for improvement and further sustainability of the company and its products remains constant at Koers. As a result, the BIO variant was launched on the market a few years ago. This Koers mix variant is bound using a vegetable binder, is therefore even stronger and more stable than the other Koers mixes and can therefore be used in places where the requirements with regard to bearing capacity and load are high.

The most recent investment in the field of sustainability was made by Koers in the installation of 1,600 solar panels on the drying shed at the production site in Bovensmilde. This site includes a washing plant, rubble crushing plant and the computer-controlled mixing plant, which thanks to the solar panels are now completely self-sufficient and therefore completely CO2 neutral. Thanks to Koers' sustainable production process, the Koersmix semi-paving products produced by the company have an extremely low MKI of 1.44 on average. The Koersmix KoMex Natural even has an MKI value of only 0.9.