Composite panels

Aluminium composite sheet, cut and folded for facades and signage.

Composite panel is a thin sandwich of two aluminium sheets over a solid core. Because the skins are bonded to a continuous core, the sheet stays genuinely flat over large areas — which single-skin aluminium does not, as anyone who has seen an oil-canned metal facade will recognise.

It is worked like sheet metal with one trick: the back skin and core are routed in a V-groove along a fold line so the panel can be folded crisply, leaving the front skin unbroken. That is how the sharp-edged cassettes on modern facades are made, and why the corners look like folded paper rather than bent metal.

It is the standard material for facade accents, column and soffit cladding, canopy fascias and shopfront signage bands — anywhere a flat, precisely coloured surface is wanted next to glass.