Re-Cladding an Old Building Façade in Accra: A Practical Guide

The Alucobond Ghana Team 13 May 2026

refurbishment
recladding

When an Old Façade Becomes a New Question

A lot of Accra’s commercial stock from the last twenty years was clad in aluminium composite panels — banks, office blocks, showrooms along the Spintex and Ridge corridors. Some of it has faded, stained, or come loose at the joints. Some of it raises a more serious question: what core is on that building? Re-cladding is part facelift and part safety upgrade, and an honest refurbishment treats it as both.

Alucobond Ghana has worked on aluminium-composite façades in Ghana since 1977, and our approach to re-cladding starts where it should — by finding out what is already on the wall before we talk about what replaces it.

Why You Re-Clad in the First Place

There are usually three reasons a building owner picks up the phone:

1. The Façade Has Aged

Chalking, colour fade, water staining, oil-canning, or panels that have lifted at the edges. A tired façade ages the whole building and the business inside it.

2. The Core May Be Combustible

Many older panels were supplied as generic “ACP” with no disclosed core — which means they may contain a combustible PE (polyethylene) core, the material involved in the Grenfell Tower fire. On a tall or occupied building, that is a safety question, not a cosmetic one.

3. The Building Is Being Repositioned

A new tenant, a rebrand, or a sale often triggers a façade upgrade to lift the building’s value and presence.

Step One: Identify What’s Already There

You cannot responsibly re-clad until you know what you are removing. The survey establishes:

The existing core — where possible, identifying whether the current panels are PE, FR, or A2. This is the single most important finding, because a combustible core changes the urgency.
The sub-frame condition — whether the existing support can be reused or must be replaced. Corrosion and poor fixings are common on older installs.
The cavity and fire barriers — older façades frequently lack proper cavity stops; re-cladding is the moment to put that right.
Access and height — what equipment the work needs, which drives programme and cost.

This is why a re-clad is genuinely priced on survey: until the wall is opened up, nobody honestly knows what the job is.

Step Two: Specify the Replacement Properly

Re-cladding is the chance to fix the original mistake, not repeat it. We specify the new core (FR or A2, to the building’s height and occupancy), engineer the cavity and fire barriers as a system, and write the EN 13501-1 classification into the specification — so the new façade is provably what was approved.

Replacing combustible PE panels with a mineral-filled A2 core, on a properly detailed cavity, is the most valuable thing a re-clad can do on an occupied building.

The Real Standards Involved

EN 13501-1 — the reaction-to-fire class of the new panels (A2-s1,d0 for non-combustible).
BS 8414 + BR 135 — the full-scale façade fire test and pass/fail criteria for the whole system.
ASTM E283/E330/E331 — air-leakage, structural, and water-penetration performance for the installed façade system.
EN 1090 — execution of the structural aluminium/steel sub-frame.

We document against the standards relevant to the project and never claim a rating the panels do not hold.

How the Programme Runs

Survey and core identification — find out what’s on the wall and what the sub-frame can take.
Specify — new core, cavity, fire barriers, fixings, coating and colour.
Strip and prepare — remove old panels, assess and repair the support.
Install, inspect, hand over — fit to the approved detail and hand over the data sheets and fire classification.

The full scope is on our Retrofit & Re-Cladding page; for the core decision see Fire-Rated ACP Cladding, and for cost structure see the ACP Cladding Cost Guide.

Talk to Alucobond Ghana

If you own an older Accra building and you do not know what core is on it, that is exactly the call to make. We will survey it, tell you honestly what is there, and specify the replacement to the building. Call +233 27 000 0844. Alucobond Ghana, since 1977.