The company is backing its ambition in ways that are important to the customer, offering flexible delivery and an unmatched product guarantee, combined with the ability to serve as a partner in technical development – wherever the customer is located.

Aluminium is replacing copper as the material of choice in a growing number of heat transfer applications in the HVACR industry, but the speed of the change varies greatly from application to customer as well as to country.

Hydro is aware of the differences, as a fully integrated aluminium company with production capacity available to the industry’s most central manufacturing regions, and with experience as the pioneer in replacing copper in the automotive industry.

"We believe we can provide customers with what they want when they choose a supplier, then deliver according to their individual expectations," says Herbert Höller, who leads HyVAC Tubing, the global unit that Hydro has dedicated to the HVACR industry.

"Business is a relationship between people. Being there is part of our proposition."

In Milan, customers agree

Hydro was the lone global supplier of aluminium tubing to exhibit at Mostra Convegno Expocomfort 2012 in Milan, where sales and technical personnel met with potential and current customers throughout the four-day industry event.

The company presented its entire heat exchange product range at the event, including:

• All-aluminium packages (headers, tubes and clad strip for fins)
• Connecting lines for split units
• Precision tubes and solutions for solar thermal absorbers

"Hydro follows us from the moment we begin and start the project, to when we start production, where they can support in designing the components and the alloys. For example, they are the only supplier of this new multiport extrusion for HVACR," says Research & Development manager Giacomo Betti of Valmex SpA.

"Our main point is we need a supplier with flexibility. We have different types of heat exchanger products, for the heating market and the HVAC market, so we need someone who can deliver flexible quantities, samples, first batches. They have the flexibility we need."

Ouraset is the brand name of the solar thermal systems created by Tansug Makina, a Turkish company with production in Adana. The heat absorber for their solar collectors comprises copper sheets welded to copper tubes by ultrasonic welding method, but production director Sertac Sivri says he is interested in aluminium.

"In my opinion, the most important advantage about Hydro is their 10-year warranty," he says. "The Turkish market in general looks first at price, then at quality. Suppliers do the reverse. If you give the warranty, you stand behind the quality. This means something.

"The second point is personal relations – the communication. Talk to us and be there for us. This is an important aspect of doing business in Turkey. Hydro follows up."