Celebrating 20 Years of Fire Safety with Mitsubishi ALPOLIC

This year marks the 20-year anniversary of Mitsubishi ALPOLIC™ Fire Safe panels in Australia, and we’re sure that our team at Network Architectural are not the only ones celebrating.

Why? 

Mitsubishi showed great foresight in introducing an FR core ALPOLIC™ panel 20 years ago, which is a fire-retardant panel composed of two aluminium skins and mineral-filled fire-retardant core.

More recently Mitsubishi went one step further with Fire Safety and removed all the polyethylene out of the core and introduced their new ALPOLIC™ NC (non-combustible) panel with a 100% mineral fibre core (ZERO Polyethylene).

Safety first always

Fire is always a potential danger in construction and, if you recall the unfortunate events of the Grenfell Tower blaze in West London, the rapid spread of flame that engulfed the whole building was attributed to the use of aluminium composite panels with a 100% polyethylene (highly flammable) core.

The concern today is that there are thousands of high-rise apartments and other buildings that also have the same highly flammable core material within their panels, which could pose a serious risk. This same core type was also attributed to the “near-miss” fire in the Lacrosse building in Melbourne’s Docklands in 2014.

A quick history

To give everyone a bit of background, the original Mitsubishi ALPOLIC™ panel was released into the global market in 1972, and since then, has been used for architectural applications such as external facades and interior claddings, roof coverings, and ceilings of hospitals, schools, aged care facilities, high rise office buildings, airports etc.

However, in 1999, due to the growing fears about fire and flammable risk, globally recognised multi-national company Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation developed a new fire-retardant version which they named Mitsubishi ALPOLIC™/fr.

Mitsubishi ALPOLIC™/fr was introduced to Australia in 1999, where our partner brand, SGI Architectural, secured the exclusive distribution rights to the product. Upon recognising the importance of fire resistance in building materials, both Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation and SGI Architectural made the responsible and safety-conscious decision to only promote and sell the new ALPOLIC™/fr material into the Australian Construction Market from that point on.

However, unfortunately, competitors to Mitsubishi ALPOLIC™ in Australia continued to flood the market with the dangerous 100% PE filled core aluminium composite panel, as it is a cheaper option than the FR grade material.

Since 1999, Network Building Supplies and Network Architectural have partnered with SGI Architectural, and to this day, the fire-retardant ALPOLIC™//fr is still one of our most popular products.

In 2019 Mitsubishi released their new ALPOLIC™ NC (non-combustible) panel specially designed for the new tougher standards introduced into the Australian market. The ALPOLIC™ NC contains 100% Mineral Fibre with ZERO Polyethylene within the core. Recent testing to the AS1530.1, EN1350-1 A1 Classification and AS5113 (large scale façade test) show that the new ALPOLIC™ NC is the safest aluminium panel in the world today.

Which brings us back to why we are celebrating!

20-years is quite the milestone, especially when it comes to fire safety. As the exclusive distributors of Mitsubishi ALPOLIC™ in Australia, we’re celebrating 20 years of Mitsubishi ALPOLIC™ supplying Fire Safe Aluminium Composite Cladding into the Australian Construction market – leading the way since 1999.

Mitsubishi ALPOLIC™ complies with all the current Australian standards and offers the most extensive panel and paint warranty within its class.

Network Architectural are proud exclusive national distributors of the Mitsubishi ALPOLIC™ range of products and are committed to ensuring fire safety is a priority in all applications across our industry.

We’re sure everyone in the architectural, building and construction industries will agree with the importance of fire safety and will join us in celebrating the 20 years of Mitsubishi ALPOLIC™ Fire Safe panels into the Australian market.

Here’s to many more years to come!

Do you want to know more about Mitsubishi ALPOLIC™?

Just like you, we believe that using building materials which improve safety and lower potential risk on construction projects is a priority.

Our Mitsubishi ALPOLIC™ range of products is a perfect example on how to achieve this.

Stick with the brand name you can trust for all of your construction needs.

If you have any questions or would like to know more, contact us today on (02) 8316 5000 or send us a message at [email protected] 

Our team of building supplies and architectural experts will be happy to help.