“We build infrastructure designed to last up to a hundred years and return as 100% recyclable steel — sustainability is engineered into every solution, and now we can prove it with verified numbers.”
Sustainability Director, ViaCon Poland
The Challenge
Climate change is intensifying both drought and extreme rainfall, straining how infrastructure manages stormwater, while traditional concrete solutions carry a high carbon and energy footprint. ViaCon's public-infrastructure clients increasingly need documented environmental performance of the materials they specify — and that demand reaches back to the manufacturer.
The Solution
ViaCon engineers corrugated steel pipes (HelCor), arch structures and stormwater systems as a lower-carbon, faster alternative to concrete; hot-dip galvanised steel gives a service life of up to 100 years and is fully recyclable at end of life. Its Rydzyna plant runs an integrated system certified to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001, and the group has committed to net-zero steel by 2050, joined the SteelZero initiative and cut virgin-plastic and steel use through design. ViaCon documents its products with verified EPDs (EN 15804+A2), including the Poland pipes-and-stormwater declaration published in the EPD Polska register.
The Result
ViaCon backs its environmental positioning with verified, comparable, EU-recognised data — combining a 100-year service life, fully recyclable steel and published EPDs for sustainable procurement and green-building requirements.
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.