The Holmestrand engineers saw early on that aluminum could work as construction material, but fitting market needs was not an easy task. In the 1930s, the plant supplied facades, roofs and interior decoration, but building materials didn’t become a major part of the company's production strategy until the post-war period. The inter-war development of canning materials led the plant into a research collaboration with their majority owner Alcan.
This gave access to technology that could be used to produce modern building materials. When the rolling mill in Holmestrand introduced aluminum recycling in the early 1990s, developing quality materials for construction became a central innovation focus. Today, the company is a leader in this field, and buildings all over the world have been put up with Holmestrand materials.
The picture on the top left shows that there was great faith in aluminum as a building material at the end of the 1960s. At that time, the Holmestrand factory collaborated with the Norwegian Technical University (NTH) and architects to develop a new type of panelling, that was used in eight uniquely designed houses at Sommero in Holmestrand.
The picture on the top right illustrates that aluminum offered a feeling of cleanliness and modernity to projects Holmestrand was involved in in the mid-1930s, like the new entrance and reception area for the major Oslo-based newspaper Aftenposten.
The lower picture show the football stadium in Cluj, Romania, one of the international projects that the plant has delivered materials to since the 2000s. Buildings such as this, and airport terminal 3 in Beijing are examples of large buildings for which the company has supplied materials with low carbon footprints.