METABUILD – Increasing resource efficiency in metalworking businesses in South Asia

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) can make a significant contribution to improving the environmental and resource friendliness of production processes in Asia. Access to financing options for investments in such production technologies is a central challenge for SMEs.

Against this background, adelphi and its partners advised 400 enterprises from the metalworking and building sectors in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. This project built upon the Project ACIDLOOP (2012-2016) and was, like its forerunner, funded by the SWITCH-Asia Network Facility. The overarching goal of the European Commission’s SWITCH-Asia Programme is to promote economic development and poverty reduction in Asia. To this end, the environmental impacts of industry and consumers should be reduced and sustainable growth promoted.

adelphi created training materials on financing options for the deployment of more resource-efficient technologies in SMEs and a corresponding modular training toolkit for the METABUILD project. In addition to the trainings on financing options, participating firms received support initiating contact with banks. adelphi also organised regional dialogues to embed the project topics into the region’s political and business environments. While the policy dialogues served to promote a discussion between representatives from politics and industry on how policy measures can further strengthen resource efficiency in industry, the client dialogues served as platforms for exchange between SMEs and their customers on the impacts of resource efficiency.

In addition to adelphi, the METABUILD partners were TERI and Stenum Asia from India, ARECon from Austria, SEED from Nepal, DCCI from Bangladesh, and the National Cleaner Production Centre from Sri Lanka.