“In modern infrastructure procurement, an EPD is no longer optional — it is the entry ticket. Our certification through EPD Polska gave us a measurable advantage in tender scoring.”
Sustainability Director, ViaCon Poland
The Challenge
ViaCon Poland is a leading manufacturer of corrugated steel pipes, arch structures and stormwater management systems for road, rail and water infrastructure projects. As Polish public procurement increasingly adopted green criteria — driven by EU taxonomy requirements and national sustainable development goals — ViaCon faced a clear mandate: provide verified, third-party environmental data or risk losing bids to competitors who could. Major infrastructure tenders began explicitly awarding points for products with Environmental Product Declarations, making certification a strategic necessity rather than a marketing exercise.
The Solution
ViaCon commissioned a comprehensive cradle-to-gate lifecycle assessment under EN 15804+A2:2019, covering steel coil production, galvanisation, corrugation forming, bolt and accessory manufacturing, and delivery logistics. The assessment was conducted through EPD Polska with independent third-party verification, ensuring compliance with international standards recognised by LEED, BREEAM, and DGNB rating systems. The resulting EPD covers ViaCon full product range of HelCor pipes and stormwater solutions manufactured at the Polish facility.
The Result
The verified EPD became a decisive differentiator in public tender evaluations. Within six months of publication, ViaCon secured three major infrastructure contracts where the EPD was cited as a key factor in scoring. The declaration also opened conversations with international partners who require environmental documentation as a baseline for supplier qualification. ViaCon has since extended the certification approach to subsidiaries in Hungary, Romania, and the Baltics — building a portfolio of country-specific EPDs across the group.
Steel infrastructure is a long-cycle business. A ViaPlate® structure installed today may still be carrying traffic in 2120. The question of environmental footprint is not hypothetical — it is embedded in the asset from the moment it leaves the factory, and increasingly, it determines whether that asset can be specified at all.
Product portfolio
ViaCon Poland designs and manufactures four families of structure, covering culverts, bridges, modular crossings, and precast spans — each now with declared environmental data.
What the LCA revealed
The Life Cycle Assessment confirmed what the production team already suspected: the dominant environmental hotspot sits upstream, in steelmaking. The manufacturing and assembly operations at ViaCon are relatively lean. Declaring those numbers independently made it possible to have a different conversation with procurement officers — one based on verified data, not estimates.
GWP lifecycle stage breakdown — ViaPlate® 380 (A1–A4, kg CO₂e / tonne of product)
~84%
~8%
~8%
Indicative breakdown based on EN 15804+A2:2019 LCA. Exact values per product in published EPD documents.
The EPD does not change the product. It changes how clients see it — and whether they can use it at all on regulated projects.
The business case
Public procurement in infrastructure increasingly scores environmental declarations as a qualifying criterion, not just a tiebreaker. For ViaCon, the EPD programme has shifted from a compliance exercise to a commercial tool used in every international tender submission.
The EPD is now a standard part of every international tender submission. It does not replace the product. It explains it — in the language procurement offices, designers, and sustainability auditors can use directly.