The ACO Story: In the Beginning
In 1946, Josef-Severin Ahlmann founded the company Severin Ahlmann Beton on the Ahlmann family industrial land in Rendsburg, former West Germany.
This new company was formed to manufacture and sell cement concrete and terrazzo products, such as window frames and pipes.
The company later changed its name from Severin Ahlmann Beton to ACO – an acronym for Ahlmann Company.
ACO continued to develop in Germany, making a variety of products for the construction and building industry at two factories in Rendsburg and Reith.
At the end of the 1960’s ACO started working with a relatively unknown material: polymer concrete. This material was combined with the concept of modular trench drainage, leading to the creation of ACO Drain. The success of the polymer concrete trench drainage led ACO to expand, setting up companies in Switzerland (1972), France (1976), and the USA (1978).