Geobear Celebrates 40 Years in Business

It is 40 years since Geobear introduced a revolutionary idea in ground engineering. Confronted with a collapsing floor in a popular Finland department store, the traditional and highly disruptive approach of underpinning was rejected in favour of injecting geopolymer compounds into the affected area. These rapidly expand and solidify to become as strong and resilient as concrete despite weighing 10 per cent as much.

The department store was back in business within a few days, and Geobear hasn’t looked back since. Now, 40 years on, its technology has been deployed in more than 215,000 projects in 38 countries worldwide and runs operations in the USA, China, Poland, Sweden, Finland and Ireland from its headquarters in the UK. As well as being both cheaper and significantly quicker than the alternatives, Geobear’s approach is also far greener, with the process leading to between 53 per cent and 76 per cent lower emissions, depending on the project.

It is also leading to many trees being saved, with Geobear resolving around 500 subsidence cases a year where trees would be lost using other engineering methods. The company has ambitions to go further, becoming carbon neutral itself in 2021 and recently launching a carbon-savings calculator which shows clients the emissions prevented for each tree saved.

Geobear’s CEO, Otso Lahtinen, says that although the company has been using geopolymer injection for 40 years, its potential is still becoming apparent. He said:

“A technology designed to save a shop from actual and financial collapse has now been used more than 200,000 times to stabilise the ground under offices, railway embankments, homes and all types of commercial properties. We can use the very latest technology to target and treat affected areas quickly, effectively, with minimum disruption and in a way that reflects the acute need to reduce emissions and meet the climate challenge. The demands of the next 40 years are becoming clearer as the world continues to urbanise, with new infrastructure badly required and much existing capacity in urgent need of renewal. None of this can happen if we can’t rely on the ground beneath our feet and our buildings to be stable and secure.”