Land Recycling

Opportunities for property development

Our cities and local communities are continuously growing. However, they also encounter limitations, because building land is becoming increasingly scarce. According to the German Institute of Urbanisation, almost 130 hectares of land are claimed per day for settlements and transport purposes. Natural areas are often sacrified for inward investors – despite the fact that developed sites in prime locations are also available. Revitalising these “jewels” and activating their economic potential is one of the goals of ZECH UMWELT GmbH.

An eyesore turned into a gem:
our solution for sustainable urban development is “Inward Growth”. Whatever the site – we remediate and decontaminate properties of all kinds, thus returning them to the economic chain. The advantages for property owners, authorities, remediators and buyers are that they all stand to gain from attractively priced inner-city sites enjoying LAND RECYCLING optimal links to infrastructures. From the environmental perspective, the future belongs to land recycling – the only way of ensuring that green fields stay that way.

We bear the risk, you harvest the fruits:
many local governments have come to realise that revitalising disused or degraded land is a way of attracting new enterprises and creating jobs. In many places, forms of urban development that protect natural resources have priority over new development schemes and receive government assistance. Yet there are still reservations: because the substrate of a contaminated site is hidden from view, it is difficult to put a price tag on remediation. We are successful in this respect on account of our many years’ experience and our state-of-the-art surveying techniques – indeed, we are so good that we bear the risk involved in the scheme and will quote you a fixed price.

Our services – more than state-of-the-art environmental protection:
There is much more we can offer besides reliable information and planning security – namely a complete range of land management services. We analyse, evaluate, plan and remediate contaminated locations and disused industrial sites, take care of selling the revitalised property, if requested, and will even handle new property construction and the subsequent facility management. How can we achieve all this, while maintaining highest quality standards? Quite easily: ZECH UMWELT GmbH is part of, and supported by a strong corporate group – the internationally operating ZECH GROUP, comprising professional companies in the fields of civil engineering and facility management.

An example of successful land recycling – remediation of the Emden oil refinery:
An enormous achievement within a mere 30 months: transforming the Frisia oil refinery, established in 1959 on a 66-hectare site in Emden, into the new “Frisia Industrial Estate”. This was accomplished by an EU-cofinanced project carried out by the Frisia Emden consortium managed by Umweltschutz Nord GmbH, a Zech subsidiary specialised in environmental engineering.

The challenge – emptying and restoring the site to its previous state:
There was much to do, given that the refinery had not been closed down properly at the outset. A total of 59 tanks, 58 kilometres of piping, pumping facilities and pig stations, loading facilities and complex process engineering plant containing a total of 13,500 metric tons of oil were emptied and cleaned, and the site returned to its pre-refinery state; the job also involved the removal of 31 buildings, 25 transformers and 6,000 square metres of asbestos lining. The visible end of the refinery was the demolition of three chimneys with heights up to 92 metres.

A clean bill of health – soil remediation using the Terraferm^® process:
The only way of ensuring safe use of the site, which was contaminated with hydrocarbons and mineral oil products, was to replace the soil. More than 85,000 cubic metres of contaminated substrate were excavated and treated using the highly effective “Terraferm® Biosystem Earth” process in the processing facilities at Umweltschutz Nord GmbH in Ganderkesee and Bremen. The contamination problem was completely solved by means of this biological soil cleaning method, and there was no need to move the contaminated soil to some other site. This complex project ended with the construction of the new “Frisia Industrial Estate”.

Successful teamwork – how it’s done:
If you are a property owner wanting rid of a contaminated site because you do not want to shoulder the risks of remediating at your own expense, or if you are looking for assistance in making the site usable again, then we can help you in either event. It is advantageous here if a public-law contract has been concluded with local government, specifying the entire execution of the project, including the scope and timeframe of remediation and the basic principles for subsequent marketing of the site. To ensure a project’s success, we also focus efforts on working together with the local authorities involved – because land recycling is always teamwork.