The new report from GFI and Defra highlights a growing reality for businesses: putting nature at the heart of decision-making is not only an environmental responsibility, but a commercial opportunity.
The report sets out how businesses improve resilience, reduce risk, and unlock new growth by integrating nature into the way they plan, invest, and operate. It is part of a broader effort to make the business value of nature more visible, practical, and actionable across sectors.
ECOncrete was selected as one of 20 showcases alongside organisations including Barclays, Schroders, Lloyds, and National Grid, demonstrating how businesses can benefit both nature and commercial performance through strategies such as nature-inclusive design. Our inclusion reflects a critical shift across ports, waterfronts, and offshore assets: marine infrastructure can no longer just withstand the environment. It must support it.
This is especially urgent for coastal and marine sectors. As sea-level rise, erosion, stronger storms, and biodiversity loss place increasing pressure on shorelines and marine ecosystems, the way infrastructure is designed and built must evolve. Conventional coastal protection remains essential, but resilience can no longer be measured by structural performance alone.
Nature-inclusive infrastructure offers a different approach. ECOncrete’s validated technologies are designed to meet engineering requirements while creating habitat complexity, supporting marine life, and enabling measurable biodiversity uplift. By embedding ecological value into marine concrete infrastructure, projects can support both asset protection and ecosystem recovery.
The report helps spotlight the business opportunity behind this transition. Scaling proven nature-inclusive solutions can reduce long-term risk, support regulatory readiness, strengthen stakeholder value, and help coastal assets adapt to a changing environment.
Over the past 18 months, ECOncrete delivered its technology across more than 20 marine infrastructure projects globally, creating over 90,000m² of verified marine habitat and achieving x3.4 revenue growth. Being named in this report, alongside organizations of the scale and profile GFI selected, reflects how far that commercial trajectory has come.
We are pleased to have contributed to this timely initiative and to help highlight the role of nature-positive infrastructure in building more resilient, future-ready businesses.
Thank you to GFI, Defra, and HM Treasury for advancing the business case for nature.
Images: Top image, left: Vancouver Fraser Port Authority; image right: the same armor blocks, several months after deployment.