The carbon footprint of our solutions is gaining increasing attention and relevance, especially when looking at new applications of aluminium, and when improving the ecological performance of existing ones. Our approach to involve customers and key stakeholders in developing better solutions helps us to differentiate and become the partner of choice. For example, our rolled products business area works with packaging manufacturers to improve certain packaging material to provide high functionality while improving recycling rates.
We also work closely with our customers to develop products that save energy and reduce emissions. Aluminium façades can lower operating costs and help enable buildings to produce as much energy as they consume during operation. We have constructed in Hydro three such buildings so far, in Germany, France and India. Heat pumps, integrated photovoltaic systems and intelligent building design all contribute to energy neutrality.
By bringing our building systems operation's R&D team closer to product development, we aim to increase sharing and thereby strengthen the Domal, Wicona, Technal and Alumafel brand centers, and to increase speed-to-market of new products. This includes utilizing competence from our India unit, where craftsmen come closer to our brands' range of specialty products and systems, working mode and overall product offer. In fact, the operation's six locations in Europe and one in India work as if they were in the same location. In addition to the technical specifications of the products, delivery time is an important competitive factor. A separate KPI has been introduced to reduce the time elapsing from project to product to customer delivery.
Through our rolled products business area, we have a strategic research partnership with the University of Aachen in Germany, aiming at modeling the whole rolling process chain.
Award-winning façades
Hydro's building systems brand Wicona won first prize in the building rehabilitation category at the world's biggest building exhibition, BAU 2011, in Munich, Germany. The award-winning façade solution, TEmotion, can reduce energy consumption in existing buildings by more than 50 percent. TEmotion is a complete façade module with a series of energy-saving elements such as sun-shading devices, ventilation, lighting, heat pumps and electricity production from solar cells. About 40 percent of the world's energy consumption is related to buildings. Unlike ordinary rehabilitation projects, where the occupants of the building often must move out, the TEmotion concept makes it possible to rehabilitate office by office during a period ranging from just days to a maximum of a couple of weeks. This saves time, money and energy.
More efficient solar power stations
Hydro is developing a new system together with 3M to create less expensive and more efficient large-mirror solar power stations that are almost completely recyclable. The system combines an extremely good reflective foil from 3M with a special aluminium strip developed by Hydro, called HyBridAl. The strip acts as a light, robust base material that facilitates the manufacture of considerably larger one-piece mirrors than those previously made of glass.
