FROM A PIONEER TO THE SYNONYM - Alucobond

Riviera Hotel, Seoul, Korea
At the time the ALUCOBOND ‘delivery stop’ to the Far East was
still in force, and with the support of the Alusuisse sales company in
Tokyo, which was mainly trading in aluminium ingots, I had already
created the prerequisites for a later intensive development of the
markets in Korea and Taiwan. These markets were important metal-
Y.B. Lee
ALUCOBOND® in Korea
by Y.B. Lee, President, Y.B. International Company, Seoul, Korea
I first heard of ALUCOBOND® in 1985 when I was the Sales Director
of Keun Hwa, a façade and cladding company in Seoul. A colleague
of mine read and told me about this composite panel produced in
Germany. We had a few cladding contracts on hand and decided to
contact the manufacturer in Singen. Soon thereafter Claus Leyting
visited us in Seoul and a long-term relation with ALUCOBOND®
commenced.
In December that year we ordered the first 1 000 m² of ALUCOBOND®
for use on some smaller projects, however, we already had some
more prestigious projects on the drawing board, amongst others
the Riviera Hotel in Seoul which Keun Hwa completed in late 1986.
Major projects followed soon and it was in conjunction with the
Hyatt Hotel (today Novotel) in Pusan that I first met Manni Wolf
from Switzerland and Erich Schneider from Singapore. They came
1985
buying countries for Alusuisse Japan due to the presence of local aluminium
industries. Non-exclusive representatives had endeavoured
to sell ALUCOBOND ® , but they were relatively unsuccessful as we
had to proceed in a very ‘reserved fashion’ for known reasons. The
abolition in the previous year of these particular restrictions conse-