This week, Primekss | PrīmX® Industrial Concrete Flooring & Structural welcomed participants of the Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programme "Sustainable Design and Applications of Fibre-Reinforced Concrete 2026", a joint academic programme delivered by Rīgas Tehniskā universitāte (Riga Technical University) (RTU), Brno University of Technology (BUT) and Politecnico di Torino (PoliTO).
Primekss | PrīmX® Industrial Concrete Flooring & Structural R&D center (PBIC) hosts Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programme on fibre-reinforced concrete in Rīga, Latvia
This week, Primekss | PrīmX® Industrial Concrete Flooring & Structural welcomed participants of the Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programme "Sustainable Design and Applications of Fibre-Reinforced Concrete 2026", a joint academic programme delivered by Rīgas Tehniskā universitāte (Riga Technical University) (RTU), Brno University of Technology (BUT) and Politecnico di Torino (PoliTO).
Students from Czechia, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Romania and Cyprus, together with their Latvian counterparts, spent a full day across three sites: the Primekss | PrīmX® Industrial Concrete Flooring & Structural R&D Centre (PBIC), the Primekss | PrīmX® Industrial Concrete Flooring & Structural concrete material production facility and a completed PrīmX® project in service.
The programme opened with a session by Artjoms Smirnovs, Head of Marketing & Strategic Clients, on drying shrinkage, the mechanism behind cracking, curling, and the joints a conventional slab requires in order to survive it. Ivo Ērglis and Zigurds Zvaigzne led the site tours of the R&D Centre, and Sintija Sirsniņa-Garance, R&D Centre Manager, ran a knowledge check with the groups before the technical depth increased.
The day's central lecture, PrīmX® Design Principles of SFRSSC & Full-Scale Testing, was delivered by Martins Suta, Head of Design.
"A lab sample confirms that a mix behaves. It cannot tell you how a slab restrains itself at real dimensions, or how pre-compression develops against full-size reinforcement. That is why self-stressing behaviour is verified at full scale before it becomes a design principle, rather than extrapolated from a lab result," said Martins Suta.
After a week built around hands-on fibre-reinforced concrete testing at university facilities, participants moved from laboratory conditions to a live production line and a finished industrial floor.
The visit establishes a direct working link between the Primekss | PrīmX® Industrial Concrete Flooring & Structural R&D Centre and three European engineering faculties, and gives a cohort of future structural engineers from seven countries a continuous line of sight from material-scale testing to industrial-scale performance.