FROM A PIONEER TO THE SYNONYM - Alucobond

A Toast to 40 … and Many More
by Jim Helgoth, President, Elward Systems Corporation, Denver, USA
In 1977, serendipity introduced our founder, Mel Elward, to our
future. He was attending a trade show in Phoenix and just happened
to come upon the ALUCOBOND® booth. Mel was rightly
impressed by the product for its composition and full range of applications.
For the next 30 years we have evolved as a company that
continues to succeed within a niche market for exterior walls focusing
on the ALUCOBOND® product.
We started out with small jobs that used some of the original standard
colors like bright orange and red. In 1978 we completed the
Dairyland Insurance (today Moore) Office Building in Denver, our
Biltmore office complex, Phoenix / AZ, USA
Jim Helgoth
first larger, clear anodized ALUCOBOND® project, using panels
shipped out of Singen / Germany, at a time the US production facility
in Benton, Kentucky was still under construction.
The use of ALUCOBOND® pushed us into fabrication, which we
had never done. We quickly realized we could only guarantee a
timely completion of the projects, while improving quality control,
by pushing our own extrusion design. Not satisfied with the inherent
problems of a ‘caulked’ system, we developed our own ‘dry’
design concept. As Doug Elward explains, “Our current Rout &
Return Dry Set System is not substantially different from the panel
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