Elval Colour is a leading European in green products that contribute to sustainable buildings with coated aluminium and composite panels. Elval Colour has two state-of-the art manufacturing sites located in Greece, while more than 99% of its sales are exported to a total of 70 countries around the world. The company manufactures and sells a full range of building envelope products of superior quality and latest technology. With 40 years of experience in coating and colour matching, Elval Colour is a reliable partner that offers added value services to customers by assisting in product specification and selection to best suit the needs of the project/application.
Customer orientation and dedication accompanies production and product delivery. Continuous R&D in various fields allows steady improvement of technology, quality, and environmental standards.
Elval Colour is a member of the European Coil Coating Association (ECCA), the European Aluminium Association, and is ISO 9001-2008, ISO 14001-2004 and OHSAS 18001 accredited.
Integrity
To act in a manner that is fair and respectful to each other.
Passion
To enjoy what we do and pursue our goals and objectives with great energy and enthusiasm.
Commitment
To be dedicated into taking ownership of our actions and doing whatever it takes to deliver value to all our stakeholders.
Knowledge
To relentlessly pursue the understanding of our business and products and disseminate the knowledge generated across all functions in order to continuously improve.
Environment
To treat the environment with responsibility and respect.
Market Orientation
To detect customer and competitor actions, disseminate relevant information across business functions and respond effectively and efficiently.
To the ongoing effort of architects and designers to create energy efficient and sustainable buildings, Elval Colour contributes with etalbond® and special coatings. Environmental Product Declarations are available for all of its products, confirming the focus of the company on delivering sustainable material and leadership in green building material and innovation, by understanding market needs, committing to technological prowess and continuous improvement of processes and products.
Main products of the company are, etalbond® aluminium composite panels, ENF® corrugated sheets designed for roofing or façade applications, Ydoral® pre-painted aluminium for rain gutters, orofe® pre-painted aluminium coils & sheets for roofing applications. Elval Colour products are offered in a wide range of standard and custom made colours made in its own colour-mixing lab and applied in one of the 4 coating lines to match any customer/project requirement.
Elval Colour is a leading European in green products that contribute to sustainable buildings with coated aluminium and composite panels. Elval Colour has two state-of-the art manufacturing sites located in Greece, while more than 99% of its sales are exported to a total of 70 countries around the world. The company manufactures and sells a full range of building envelope products of superior quality and latest technology. With 40 years of experience in coating and colour matching, Elval Colour is a reliable partner that offers added value services to customers by assisting in product specification and selection to best suit the needs of the project/application.
Customer orientation and dedication accompanies production and product delivery. Continuous R&D in various fields allows steady improvement of technology, quality, and environmental standards.
Elval Colour is a member of the European Coil Coating Association (ECCA), the European Aluminium Association, and is ISO 9001-2008, ISO 14001-2004 and OHSAS 18001 accredited.
Integrity
To act in a manner that is fair and respectful to each other.
Passion
To enjoy what we do and pursue our goals and objectives with great energy and enthusiasm.
Commitment
To be dedicated into taking ownership of our actions and doing whatever it takes to deliver value to all our stakeholders.
Knowledge
To relentlessly pursue the understanding of our business and products and disseminate the knowledge generated across all functions in order to continuously improve.
Environment
To treat the environment with responsibility and respect.
Market Orientation
To detect customer and competitor actions, disseminate relevant information across business functions and respond effectively and efficiently.
To the ongoing effort of architects and designers to create energy efficient and sustainable buildings, Elval Colour contributes with etalbond® and special coatings. Environmental Product Declarations are available for all of its products, confirming the focus of the company on delivering sustainable material and leadership in green building material and innovation, by understanding market needs, committing to technological prowess and continuous improvement of processes and products.
Main products of the company are, etalbond® aluminium composite panels, ENF® corrugated sheets designed for roofing or façade applications, Ydoral® pre-painted aluminium for rain gutters, orofe® pre-painted aluminium coils & sheets for roofing applications. Elval Colour products are offered in a wide range of standard and custom made colours made in its own colour-mixing lab and applied in one of the 4 coating lines to match any customer/project requirement.
Coated aluminium cladding and roofing for durability and aesthetics
Elval Colour’s aluminium cladding and roofing products, including orofe-coated aluminium strips and etalbond composite panels, are displayed in terminals across numerous continents. Elval Colour, a leading European manufacturer of coated aluminium, makes some of the world’s most impressive buildings possible.
From Germany’s Frankfurt Airport to Nacala International in Mozambique and Zhengzhou Xin Zheng International in China, Elval Colour offers a complete range of specified and sustainable products to dress the roofs and the facades of the world’s leading airports. The company has recognised that the creative visions of architects and designers can only be achieved with innovative materials. As such, some of the world’s most unique and daring buildings use its orofe-coated aluminium strips, etalbond A2 composite aluminium panels and Elval ENF aluminium sheets because they empower architects to design right to the limit of their imaginations.
Founded in Greece in 1977, Elval Colour is a leading European coated aluminium manufacturer that produces and sells a full range of building envelope products for facades, roofing, rain gutters and more. More than 98% of the company’s sales are exported to over 70 countries across the world. With over four decades’ worth of experience in coating and colour matching, Elval Colour adds extra value by helping customers select the products that best suit the needs of their projects. Beyond that, the company follows through after delivery with customer orientations and continuing dedication to enabling the best application of its products.
This is possible because the company’s employees care about their work, and pursue corporate goals and objectives with great energy and enthusiasm. As a leader in both product quality and service, Elval Colour is always trying to identify the next customer need and address it as effectively as possible. Continuous research and development in various fields allows steady improvement of technology, quality and environmental standards.
The case study of Bangalore International Airport
A recent example of what Elval Colour can do for clients is on view at Bangalore International Airport, the third busiest in India, which underwent a $221-million expansion of its main terminal building in 2011–12. The upgrade increased the airport’s capacity from 11.6 million passengers per year to 17 million and enabled it to accommodate Airbus’ double-decker A380 ‘Superjumbo’ aircraft. To achieve this, architects HOK had to expand the terminal building to cover an area of over 150,000m2, incorporating 5,300 seats, 90 check-in desks, 30 self-service check-ins, 48 emigration and immigration counters, 48 security stations and 15 baggage reclaim areas.
Crucially, HOK’s structure needed to “create a grand, dramatic presence that seamlessly blends with the existing terminal”, according to the design brief. Moreover, the brief called for an “elegantly curved roof” with “undulating wave shape” of a smile. In one swoop, the dramatic roof structure not only needed to provide total protection for passengers arriving and leaving the terminal, but define a “strong physical presence and visual identity for the airport”.
That’s why Elval Colour’s orofe-coated aluminium strips were chosen to cover the 55,000m2 of softly curving roof. The lightweight coils, made from a specially strengthened aluminium alloy, are durable and flexible, designed for corrugated or standing seam roofing solutions. Built to bend, orofe was the perfect choice for the sort of wave-shaped design that HOK had envisaged. After casting, a special polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) liquid-based paint was applied to the coils, resulting in an optimum colour finish and superb durability.
Together, the rolling, coating and installation teams at Elval Colour created a final product that met the performance, durability and aesthetic criteria set by the project owner and the architects. The roof of the Bangalore International Airport is built to last: orofe is incombustible, anticorrosive, UV-resistant, and requires minimal maintenance and cleaning. Orofe is a complete roofing solution, consisting of four different major alloy categories designed specifically for roof and wall systems, and it uses an advanced coating system to provide excellent corrosion resistance and superior aesthetics. It’s a lightweight, versatile, strong and beautiful material suitable for almost any type of building. Orofe-coated aluminium is made to match the needs of the most demanding imaginations and operating conditions.
With the project’s completion in 2012, Elval Colour had provided the finishing touch to an airport that will act as an important driver for the growth of Bangalore, Karnataka and the rest of southern India.
Aluminium composite panels
But roofing is only one application for Elval Colour’s materials. The quality of all Elval Colour products is closely controlled through its in-house processes of casting, coating and finishing. These operations ensure each product achieves the maximum longevity and formability.
First among these products is Elval Colour’s aluminium composite panels (ACPs), which offer architects a supremely versatile material for building facades. Each panel demonstrates a rigidity beyond that of most solid metal surfaces, which prevents the material from deforming and becoming visibly ‘wavy’ due to local buckling, a process known as oil canning. It’s not unusual to see metal roofing and cladding with unattractive bulges and ripples that make it look like it was installed in a storm, but that’s not the case with Elval Colour products. Its ACPs provide an extremely flat surface to which high-specification liquid coil coatings can be applied, allowing the panels to resist oxidisation and degradation even in extreme environments.
At the same time, a limitless variety of colour coatings enables greater flexibility and freedom in design, a particularly important parameter for materials used
in the hospitality sector. These are developed in Elval Colour’s own colour-mixing lab and applied in one of four coating lines to match any customer or project requirement. In addition, ACPs are lighter than alternative materials such as solid aluminium. This makes it ideal for renovating existing facilities, as it allows for visual and functional upgrades of the facade without requiring major modifications of the existing structure.
Furthermore, ACPs can also be produced with specially composed cores that make them fire-retardant or even incombustible. This attribute is of paramount importance in today’s world, where fire safety becomes more and more important every day, especially in highly used facilities such as airports.
Quality control
None of this is easy. ACPs are the result of a complex production process, and strict attention must be paid throughout to ensure the best quality final product. The panels comprise two coil-coated aluminium sheets between which a lightweight organic core with mineral fillers is sandwiched and bonded with adhesive. As aluminium oxidises, it needs to be treated accordingly. Even the process of rolling – the transformation of an aluminium slab into a coil – can result in oxidisation as well as contamination of the aluminium surface from the lubricants and other agents used to facilitate the procedure. Therefore, it is vital to clean the aluminium surface by chemically treating it with a combination of alkaline and acidic washes to remove the smut and any oxides from it. After that, a passivation layer is applied, which protects the surface from future oxidisation. This layer is also polarised to bond with the coating that is added next. This pre-treatment process is vital: if omitted or done incorrectly, the ACP surface will be too reactive, leading to corrosion.
Based to location and application, tailor-made coating systems from PVDF of FEVE systems are applied to provide protection against the elements and give ACPs their aesthetically pleasing qualities. PVDF coatings are highly cross-linked painted systems with high UV resistance and an easy-to-clean finish. They are used across Elval Colour’s facade materials and can be provided with a dirt-repellent layer that requires even less maintenance. The quality of this coating can vary if it is not well applied. Whereas the normal composition is 70% PVDF and 30% acrylic, the coatings used by Elval Colour have an 80% PVDF content and contain no hazardous substances.
Safety and sustainability
Similarly, Elval Colour’s etalbond panels combine energy-efficient construction, economic viability and architectural quality. Together, these properties make for an outstanding facade material. Etalbond panels use a rear-ventilated construction technique, which is suitable for those who want to create facades on both new and old buildings as well as roof constructions and contemporary interiors. A long lifespan, easy maintenance and a balance of insulation, ventilation and moisture control come together in etalbond to ensure the best appearance and constitute the perfect building envelope.
Elval Colour is vertically integrated – the casting and rolling of the aluminium coil, the surface coating, and the manufacturing of the composite panel are all performed by the same group. This provides full traceability for etalbond A2, granting full confidence regarding the quality of the product. Their high wind load capacity and strong penetration resistance are complemented with soft bending for the most demanding facade formations. The strips are rolled and coated in the company’s facilities with the utmost care and in compliance with the most demanding European and global norms. The panels are light, flat, highly rigid and presented with the most durable coating qualities. Etalbond is available in three different cores: etalbond PE with low-density polyethylene, etalbond FR with a fire-retardant core and etalbond A2 with an incombustible one, which is suitable for the most demanding applications and complies with all fire safety requirements for external cladding.
Contemporary buildings not only have to comply with the highest design standards, but also have to meet the latest technical requirements in the fields of sustainability, energy efficiency, noise protection, fire protection and more. Thanks to its mineral-filled core, etalbond A2 works ideally everywhere fire protection is necessary. Applications include high-rise buildings, high-traffic buildings such as airports, metro stations, shopping malls and hotels, and sensitive structures like schools, kindergartens, hospitals and elderly care centres, to name a few.
Like all Elval Colour products, etalbond A2 is a construction material that facilitates freedom of design without compromising on superior technological features. Attractive and flexible, it is easily installed and formed, and is available in a wide array of highly durable and custom-made coatings, providing architects and designers with numerous possibilities for materialising their ideas.
The importance of EN13501-1 clasification in facade materials
The European directive tests and classifies the behaviour of the material under fire, and this is done by examining and combining the results from three criteria. The first of these is the flammability of the material. Etalbond A2 is categorised as A2, which means that it consists mainly of inactive material with a minimal contribution to fire. Furthermore, it has approval from most national technical approval bodies.
The second is the release of smoke: etalbond A2 is categorised as s1, which means limited smoke release. This is very important, as smoke is the reason for most of the casualties during a fire incident.
The third criteria is the ejection of burning droplets and particles. Etalbond A2 is categorised as d0, which means that none of the above are produced, preventing development of a secondary source of fire. Moreover, the safe evacuation of the burning building, as well as the approach of firefighting crews, is not impeded.
Etalbond A2 complies with the most stringent fire safety specifications in the world and meets the highest demands for materials that prevent fire from spreading. Yet, due to the importance of Elval Colour’s role in the market, and also its corporate social responsibility, Elval Colour decided to offer only etalbond FR and/ or etalbond A2 for high-rise and buildings with high visitation or sensitivity, regardless of whether or not the local regulations allow the use of PE-based materials.