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LAUNCH OF MADASTER SWITZERLAND

News 4 mar 2019

LAUNCH OF MADASTER SWITZERLAND

Zürich, 4 maart 2019 – Eberhard Unternehmungen, Losinger Marazzi, Raiffeisen Schweiz, Swiss Prime Site AG and Swiss Re AG are the first strategic partners of Madaster Switzerland. They are, thus, major contributors to the development of the Madaster Platform in Switzerland. The platform can be used for generating material passports, which contain a broad spectrum of information about the quality, origins and current location of materials in the built environment, as well as provide insight into their circular and financial value. The documentation, registration and archiving of materials makes them easier to recover and reuse, stimulates smart design and eliminates waste.

Digitisation and the circular economy are important driving forces of the transition in the construction and real estate sector. With these strategic partners, Madaster Switzerland has began to define the structure of the online library of materials within the built environment, also taking local branch-specific needs and standards into account. ‘In these innovative companies, we have found very strong and engaged partners that are front runners in realising the Swiss circular economy within the construction sector’, says Marloes Fischer, initiator and Managing Director of Madaster Switzerland.

As a pioneer in the fields of sustainable development and sustainable construction, Losinger Marazzi also reuses construction materials. Madaster’s material passports provide essential information about the quality, origins and current location of materials. ‘Buildings and business parks, thus, are becoming documented repositories of materials, which greatly improves their reuse. At the same time, the information also provides important insights into material design—insights that can be used to create closed-loop processes for recycling materials’, according to Pascal Bärtschi, CEO of Losinger Marazzi.

Nearly a quarter of all Swiss mortgages are issued by the Swiss banking group, Raiffeisen. Raiffeisen offers its customers a discount on mortgages for energy-efficient buildings. Louis Grosjean, head of the department of business segments & projects at Raiffeisen Schweiz, stipulates: ‘In Switzerland, we are very interested in the construction sector. We support the Swiss construction sector in developing a sustainable approach by stimulating a circular economy. This is why, early on, we became actively involved in Madaster Switzerland.’

Swiss Prime Site handles building materials and products in a sustainable and efficient manner, which makes sense for a real estate company, from both an environmental and an economic perspective. ‘We have been striving for an emission-neutral building stock, for quite some time. Madaster’s material passports help us to gain insight into the circular value of our real estate portfolio, which also helps to achieve our sustainability goals’, explains Urs Baumann, Head Sustainability and Innovation at Swiss Prime Site AG, when asked about why they wanted to become a Kennedy of Madaster Switzerland.

Swiss Re, an internationally leading provider of reinsurance, stimulates solutions that enhance the resilience of urban systems, thus, also facilitating risk analysis. Together with Madaster, Swiss Re and its construction team will document the demolition of Swiss Re’s current premises, and, on the basis of the building’s individual materials, create a material passport in Madaster. ‘We are looking forward to this collaboration and hope that, with Madaster’s help, we will be able to contribute to the circular business models in Switzerland’s construction and real estate sector’, says Vincent Eckert, Head Environmental Management at Swiss Re.

Madaster is also being supported by the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA). ‘There is no alternative for the circular economy, also not in the construction and real estate sector. Madaster is the first real initiative that is enabling this sector’s transformation. Moreover, it is perfectly in line with our digitisation strategy’, Stefan Cadosch, President SIA, confirms.

Madaster can be used by private citizens, companies and government authorities alike. The introduction of a new standard for material passports in Switzerland calls for the active involvement of a selection of businesses that is representative of the entire value chain in the construction and real estate sector.

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