On 24th & 25th March 2011 my Dad, and myself were invited to Novoferm Garage Doors in Germany to see the production of their up & over garage doors, sectional garage doors and garage door operators.
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 d
oor 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.