Drive-through concrete lets a customer pull into a yard, order the exact volume of concrete, mortar or screed a job needs, from as little as 0.25 m³, pay at the touch-screen terminal, and drive away loaded inside five minutes. The system behind it is fibo Collect: automated self-service batching engineered by fibo intercon in Videbæk, Denmark, and installed at yards across Europe, the United States and beyond.
The idea is straightforward. Rather than ordering a delivery or mixing by hand, the customer collects. They drive in, choose a mix and a quantity on a screen, pay, and the material is batched fresh and discharged straight into a truck, tipper or trailer.
Yards describe it differently depending on the market, a concrete drive-thru in one country, self-service concrete or click and collect concrete in another. The mechanism is the same everywhere: a self-service batching plant standing in the yard, accurately weighing aggregates, cement and water automatically and producing a finished batch on demand.
It is not traditional ready-mix. Nothing is scheduled, nothing is trucked out, and there is no minimum order charge or delivery window to work around.
It is not site mixing either. The customer is not buying bags and loading a mixer — they are collecting a weighted, documented product made to a stored design mix, identical from one visit to the next.
What separates one installation from another is the plant itself: how precisely it doses, how quickly it cleans down between mixes, how much of its water it recovers, and what it records for the operator. That is where fibo Collect is engineered to be different.
Every step is designed to be completed by the customer alone, with little or no input from staff.
Start to finish, a typical collection is completed in under five minutes.
The commercial case works from both sides of the counter — for the customer collecting, and for the operator running the plant.
What changes | For the customer collecting | For the operator running fibo Collect |
|---|---|---|
Exact quantities | Orders the exact volume the job needs, not limited to the volume a truck carries | High margin sales in small increments without committing a mixer truck with high running costs |
Waste and spill | No waste to dispose of and no part-used bags left over | Enclosed, automated cleaning keeps material contained and the yard clean |
Speed and access | In and out in minutes, with no booking and no delivery window | Self-service automation minimal labour per sale |
Small-load economics | No minimum order charge and no part-load premium | Small orders become profitable rather than declined |
Consistent quality | The same weighed, documented mix on every visit | Recipe control removes variation and any potential disputes that could follow |
Commercial upside | One stop for the materials and the mixed product | Added revenue, added footfall and a genuine local point of difference |
For the customer, the appeal is control. A landscaper needing 0.25 m³ of bedding mortar to lay a few porcelain paving slabs has historically had three poor options: pay a part-load premium on a delivery, collect from a readymix plant with a large minimum order charge, or buy bags and mix on site. Collecting from a fibo Collect removes both compromises.
For the operator, the appeal is margin on volumes that were previously turned away. Production data across the UK network shows the average collection is just 0.4 m³ — well below a typical ready-mix minimum order, and that most collections happen mid-morning, as trades stop off on the way to a job. One builders merchant recorded an 87% increase in associated product sales in the year following installation, measured against its previous three-year average. Another attributed 18 new trade accounts directly to the plant in its first year. Customers collecting concrete tend to buy the rest of the job at the same time.
An automated concrete dispensing station built by fibo intercon, a Danish family manufacturer producing batching technology since 1935, fibo Collect turns a working yard into a collection point for concrete, mortar and screed. No two installations are identical — each is engineered around the site, the existing operation and local demand.
A well-maintained plant has a working service life of 15 to 20 years.
Installations run in builders’ merchants, aggregate yards and ready-mix operations across Europe, North America and beyond. The businesses differ; the underlying problem rarely does.
Builders’ merchants
Customers arrive daily for materials, then go elsewhere — or mix by hand — for the concrete, mortar and screed the job actually needs. A fibo Collect closes that gap by producing the finished product in the yard, alongside everything else on the ticket. Merchants make up a significant segment of fibo Collect operators worldwide, because the fundamentals are already in place: the materials, the yard and an established trade customer base. The outcome is a new production capability built on an existing site and a local USP.
Ready-mix producers
The ready-mix model is built around volume orders, and small collections are difficult to serve profitably. Minimum charges, lead times and fixed delivery slots push those enquiries away. A fibo Collect absorbs them without touching the delivery schedule, and the automatic wash cycle between recipes lets a single pan produce screed and mortar as well as concrete — categories most ready-mix sites cannot easily offer on demand. Every collection also removes a small-load journey from the fleet.
Aggregate, sand and gravel operators
Aggregate yards sell raw material but not finished product, so the value added in mixing goes somewhere else entirely. A fibo Collect converts stockpiled sand and gravel into a saleable mixed product at the point of collection. Specified with the Inliner configuration, the same installation dispenses loose aggregates automatically alongside mixed material, from a single point of sale.
The customers collecting are the trades already buying from the yard. Most jobs need a small, specific volume, and the materials that go with it often leave on the same order. Four typical applications, and many more besides.
Slab laying
Landscapers laying patios collect slab mix: bedding mortar made with sharp or soft sand. A 0.25 m³ collection beds ten 900 × 600 mm porcelain flags, which often go on the same order.
Bricklaying
Bricklayers collect mortar at the ratio the work specifies, whether 6:1, 4:1 or 3:1. A 0.25 m³ collection lays around 385 facing bricks, often bought at the same time.
Resin driveways
Driveway installers collect permeable no-fines concrete with 10 mm aggregate as the base for a resin surface. A 3 × 5.5 m resin driveway takes 1.82 m³, with the resin surfacing materials often sold alongside.
Channel drainage
Groundworkers bed and haunch channel drains in C15 concrete. A 0.5 m³ collection sets a run of eleven channel drains, often supplied from the same yard.
Both supply fresh, batched material. They differ in who travels, how much is produced, and what it costs to order small.
Factor | fibo Collect | Traditional Ready-mix |
|---|---|---|
Typical volume | From 0.25 m³, no minimum order charge | Usually a minimum load, with part-load charges below it |
Lead time | Collected on arrival, with no booking required | Ordered ahead and delivered within a scheduled window |
Who travels | The customer drives to the plant | The truck drives to the site, access can be difficult |
Waiting time | Under five minutes at the collection bay | Dependent on delivery slots or specific collection times |
Surplus material | Only the volume ordered is produced | Over-ordering is common to avoid running short |
Cost profile | No delivery charge; cost tracks volume | Delivery, part-load and waiting charges apply |
Best suited to | Small and repeat volumes with flexible timing | Large single pours |
Site mixing looks cheap until the labour, the waste and the absence of any mix record are counted.
Factor | fibo Collect | Mixing on site |
|---|---|---|
Mix accuracy | Weighed automatically against a stored design mix | Depends on the operator |
Documentation | PDF production and delivery notes for every batch | None |
Labour | One person collects; no mixing time on site | Labour tied up mixing, moving and cleaning down |
Output rate | A finished batch in minutes | Slow, and proportionally slower as volume rises |
Consistency | The same specification batch after batch | Variable between mixes and between operators |
Site impact | Nothing to store, no bags and no washout to manage | Storage, waste bags, water and washout all on site |
Best suited to | Any volume where specification and speed matter | Jobs with no access to fibo Collect |
The customer drives in and parks a vehicle or tub under the conveyor. They order on the touchscreen terminal, then pay by card or RFID tag or scan a barcode bought at the trade counter. fibo Collect weighs the materials, mixes them in the pan mixer and discharges the finished product along the conveyor. Most collections take under five minutes.
It turns small-volume enquiries into profitable sales. A fibo Collect lets an operator sell small volumes of concrete, mortar, screed and loose aggregates, and get more value from small-scale collection customers. It also cuts labour costs or frees up existing staff. Associated products often go on the same order, and the same plant can supply precast production alongside the collection business.
There are various fibo Collect models available from 96 m². Each installation is custom built around the individual site, and customised 3D drawings are available at the planning stage.
Concrete, mortar and screed, with loose aggregates added on Inliner configurations. Compact models such as fibo Smart and the FS1200 are specified for either mortar and screed or concrete and screed, while the F1200 produces all three. Up to 100 design mixes can be stored. Fibres and admixtures such as accelerators and retarders can be dosed automatically where specified.
Start with four inputs: local demand for small volumes, likely collection prices, material costs, and the associated sales each collection brings. The fibo Collect ROI calculator gives a first estimate. fibo intercon’s business support can then build a full business case, including cost breakdown, cashflow, a management report and go-to-market planning.
Yes. Drive-through concrete, concrete drive-thru, self-serve concrete and click and collect concrete all describe the same thing: collecting freshly batched material from an automated self-service batching plant. A fibo Collect is that plant.
No. Typical ready-mix plants produce in volume and deliver to site by truck, usually with a minimum load. fibo Collect Drive-through concrete is batched on demand at the plant and collected by the customer from 0.25 m³ upwards, with no delivery charge or booking window. This serves an underserved small volume collection market.
