The Spanish love their doors almost as much as their siestas. Visit any home or office and it is apparent that the doors are not low cost afterthoughts – in fact many people see them as a piece of furniture.

Doors with relief work – especially in the classical style – are particularly popular, followed by modern, rustic and contemporary styles. Not for the Spanish the flush doors so evident throughout much of the rest of Europe.

Many of the country’s door manufacturers are situated on the plains in the region of Castilla La Mancha where Don Quixote – the madman who thought he was a knight errant – tilted at windmills in the mistaken belief they were giants.

Visel Doors was formed in 1989 by a group of 65 artisans. Today the company operates two modern plants covering more than 128,000m² and has an annual production of more than one million doors.

10-year guarantee

Visel doors have a particleboard or MDF core and are assembled with solid wood around the edges and veneer faces. Doors made to the company’s patented Protec System are guaranteed for 10 years.

Export manager Mariano Simon explained: ‘Technical advances have allowed us to develop materials which are not affected by weather conditions. The doors are constructed using both solid wood and new materials – a laminate material between the surface layer and the core structure which stabilises the door and eliminates the problem of telegraphing and veneer lipping.

‘It is important to get the right image for the product and important that batches for customers are manufactured together to keep the veneer colours the same.’

Visel imports redwood veneers from Africa – important for the Spanish market – and oak, beech and maple from the US, Canada and Europe. Some of the timber arrives already dried, but if that is not the case Visel has three kiln driers of its own.

Mr Simon said: ‘As we are making one million doors a year we try to buy directly from the suppliers, so we have people in the US and Africa looking to get the best.’

The company imports 12-15 containers of solid timber per month.

All the doors have a first coat of varnish followed by hand sanding before the final coat of varnish. Mr Simon said: ‘There is a lot of manual work but we believe in hand finishing the product.’

Spanish door factories employ a large number of people – which seems at odds with the machinery – until you appreciate the amount of hand finishing going on throughout the production process.

Visel operates a two standards policy. If a door is not right it is rejected immediately. If rejected doors are reusable they will be reprocessed – otherwise they go for waste.

A single profile is used for 99.5% of the production – the only exception being for a German customer who wanted something slightly different.

Mr Simon said: ‘Our production is based on orders coming in – and they go out to 15 different countries worldwide. We are currently trying to export to Japan.’

Full service

The company has its own laboratory where it can carry out humidity and formaldehyde tests and strength tests on finished products. A design department develops modern lines and Mr Simon said: ‘We like to offer anything that anyone might want. However, we would only do one-off designs on orders of 1,000 doors or more.’

Immediately next door to Visel is Proma, a 2,000m² interior door factory launched in 1990 which has grown to a massive 43,000m² with a 460-strong workforce and a turnover estimated at €30m. Today the company manufactures interior, entrance, security, fire and wardrobe doors in either flat or fielded panels.

Proma is a pioneer in its sector in fire resistance testing, having worked hard with the UK’s BM-TRADA Certification to achieve membership of the Q-mark fire door scheme.

Again its solid timber comes from Canada, the US and African countries, with some from Indonesia. The solid timber is used for tongue and groove lipping in two sizes, for mouldings around the panels and glazing areas and for the glazing bars themselves.

The factory produces 3,000 doors a day. Particleboard for the core is sourced mainly from Spain, with some imported from Portugal.

Some of the panel shapes are cut with a pantograph and others are made by joining pieces together with beech dowels. As there is more waste using a pantograph, it is used only on the more expensive doors.

John Holmwood, director of Proma’s international department, said: ‘We have always got enough particleboard in stock for six months’ production. And in some of the red timbers, such as sapele, we have enough stock for three years’ production, amounting to 5,000m³. We keep large stocks like that so we can buy at the right price at the right time, and our total timber stocks normally amount to 9,000m³.’

Out of the 3,000 doors a day produced, 40% are made with sapele.

The factory is divided into three main areas – one where the solid timber goes in, another where the particleboard is stored and the third which is the veneer section.

Mr Holmwood said: ‘We have one door profile and the dimensions change according to the type and size of door.’

Most of the waste is used to generate heat and several of the companies in the area are banding together to start their own electricity generating plant which will serve the local village.

Proma’s main markets are Britain and Portugal. Mr Holmwood said: ‘I think we do particularly well in the British Isles because we have been fire testing at Chiltern and also because we have a wide scope of different doors in all sorts of sizes plus one-hour fire doors. Our half-hour fire doors are covered by the BM TRADA Q-mark and the latest testing we did in May 2001 in England was for the flush doors, which we also passed.’

All the company’s doors are made to order and it has about 40 series to offer, each with 10 or 12 different mouldings and different timber types, thicknesses and sizes.

Another door manufacturer in the area of La Mancha is Artevi. Here sheets of veneered high density particleboard or MDF are varnished and then dried under ultra violet. Export director Manuel Vazquez explained: ‘The doors are primed, sanded and varnished or lacquered. They are dried to between 6.5-9% humidity and we have four driers that can deal with 600m³ a day.

‘Normally we have enough stock for production for one month – that being 100,000 doors.’

Artevi has four factories for the production of doors and one for the production of architraves and frames.

Mr Vazquez said: ‘Our capacity is 7,500 doors a day but at the moment we are working on around 5,000 a day.’

Around 18% of production is exported – much to the Far East and the United Arab Emirates.

Security doors

As well as semi-solid doors, Artevi makes security doors with a sheet of steel on either side. Ready for installation, doors come certified to ISO 9000.

In the main, oak and sapele veneers are used in the production. Mr Vazquez said: ‘There are no trees exactly the same in the world so we have to select the most similar designs and colours of the wood so that when the doors go into a new flat or house they match.’

Each door is marked with a batch number and its date of production.

The company started with a production facility of 30,000m² and 50 people – it now boasts facilities of more than 140,000m², employs 1,100 people, produces close on two million units a year and has four associate companies.

Mr Vazquez said: ‘Business has been booming during the past five years as everybody is building.’

The company does not keep stock – all production is sold two-and-a-half months in advance and it is transported by the com-pany’s own fleet of 24 vehicles.

Mr Vazquez said: ‘One reason for our success is the fact that all the profits we make each year are put back into machinery.’