Norway: Building Cooperative OBOS invests into Collector Manufacturer Aventa
OBOS, the largest Nordic building cooperative, has become a major shareholder of Norwegian solar company Aventa AS. The latter is specialized in the production of solar thermal collectors made entirely of high-performance polymers. The photo shows Aventa collectors mounted on the south-facing wall of a building in Oslo.
Photo: Aventa
“We want to contribute to the development of sustainable building technology from Norway," Aage Pettersen, Communications Director at OBOS, has been quoted saying in a company press release published this August. “We want to support Aventa to become one of Europe’s leading players in the solar thermal industry”. Which means that the new shareholder will also support a number of development projects, in which it might be possible to incorporate Aventa’s products. OBOS manages a total of 135,000 buildings and offers comprehensive services to housing developers. The building cooperative bought 23 % of Aventa’s shares.
Aventa was established in 2005. Together with Chevron Phillips Chemical and French extrusion specialist Kaysersberg Plastics, the company developed a new generation of flat plate collectors made entirely of polymeric materials. “We are using high-performance polymers by Chevron Phillips to produce our collectors. They can withstand temperatures above 160 °C ,” John Rekstad, Aventa’s Chairman of the Board, explains. The absorber consists of extruded twin wall sheets, and although the thermal conductivity of plastic is lower than copper, its performance is as good as that of a copper absorber because the heat transfer fluid passes very close to the absorber surface. Rekstad wants to expand production capacity to 40,000 m2 of collector surface in 2011.
More information:
http://www.obos.no/english/
