Maybe people are trying to do some visual home improvements in time for Christmas or maybe trying to be proactive and protect their homes from the winter weather extremes, benefits  of a sectional door like insulation and weather seals stop the winter weather out, and the benefit of an operator means you don’t have to leave your car and step into the snow to enter your dryer, warmer garage!

This week we took a very large delivery from Novoferm. Novoferm are based in Wilmslow and we are  we were in early at 7.30am to help John our delivery driver unload the articulated lorry! We will be fitting these doors over the new next week or so..

We have also had a large delivery from Garador, and a few special doors from Cedar Doors and SWS.

All in all a good week, lots to fit  and a jam packed warehouse!

For those who would like a shiny new door this Christmas you might want to order early, some doors we can fit within a few days and some others can have a lead time of up to 6 weeks!

Sectional Garage Doors

We started the first day with a tour of the sectional garage doors factory in Dortmund.  This is a huge fully automated plant that produces sectional doors that are exported all over the world.  All the steel is bought in from Thyessenkrup in very large rolls of varying colours & widths.  The steel for the sections and frames is pre-painted when it arrives at Novoferm ready to be roll formed, this is a fast and efficient process. A new frame leg is produced every 7 seconds!

The sections we saw being produced whilst we were there were our most popular sectional garage door; the Novoferm ISO45 Large Rib with a white wood grain finish.  The wood grain finish is produced with a large metal roller that applies 70 tonnes of pressure to emboss the wood grain texture into the sections.  The sections are then filled with insulation, cut to size, and then allowed to cool before they are packaged.

Novoferm garage door operators

In the afternoon we went to the Novoferm owned Tormatic factory, also in Dortmund. Her we saw the Novoferm garage door operators being produced.  We saw the Novoferm Novomatic 553S being assembled. This is our most popular garage door operator. Tormatic make around 150,000 of these each year.  Every operator is tested before it is packaged and, once packaged, weighed to check nothing is missing from the box.

Up and over garage doors

On the second day of our trip we visited the up & over garage doors factory in Werth.  The up & over panels start life as flat sheets of galvanised steel, they are then break pressed into the familiar styles of the Thornby, Naseby and Guilsborough.  The doors are not touched by human hands until it comes attaching the lifting gear. The doors are then packaged by another machine before going into the warehouse.

Conclusion

Our trip to Novoferm GmbH was extremely informative. It has given Lakes Garage Doors even more confidence in Novoferm’s ability to produce and deliver world class garage door products. When talking to the people there it was obvious how justifiably proud they were of their company.