Greenfield Development and Brownfield Redevelopment

As we talked about the infra boom in our previous blog, you will come across words like Greenfield Development and Brownfield Redevelopment in many projects. We will see as much as 100 trillion rupees injected into such greenfield and brownfield projects in India by the Government through National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP).

It's simple, Green and Brown:

Greenfield:-

It is project development on land which was not used for many years but did NOT have any construction, such as agriculture land, plots, government land, etc.

Brownfield:-

It is a project redevelopment, the land will have previous construction such as residential, commercial, or industry and can be contaminated soil (polluted due to industrial waste).

Development and Redevelopment:

As in Greenfield, there is no previous construction, hence it is called Development.

As in Brownfield, there is previous construction and needs redevelopment, hence it is called Redevelopment.

Few Points:

In Greenfield projects, the investment is on building a new facility whereas, in Brownfield projects, the investment is on the redevelopment of the old facility.

In Greenfield, we don't require to cleanup site whereas, in Brownfield requires cleanup and it cost more.