Who's the customer
Founded in 1989 during a period which saw the rapid expansion of the building industry in Spain, Puertas Proma SA has been manufacturing doors for over 35 years. From the frames to finished door, initially in wood and as the company evolved alongside the market, in synthetic materials.
Still at its original location in Villacañas (province of Toledo), the company has outlived the downturn in the industry and grown into a market leader occupying a 65,000 sqm. facility with an annual production capacity not far short of half a million doors.
Cefla Finishing has partnered Puertas Proma for the last 20 years and the first line installed at the start of the 21st century is still running and fulfilling its duty as a first-rate finishing line.
The challenge
One of the keys to Puertas Proma’s survival of the slump in the building industry is the management’s ability to navigate difficulties and emerge with a winning strategy, moving with the market. Challenged by today’s business environment, the company has turned once again to Cefla Finishing with an eye to enhancing several aspects of the finishing process.
Increased capacity, better quality, greater variety, improved efficiency and sustainability, a factor which is affecting businesses across all manufacturing sectors.
The Cefla Finishing solution
Adopting the same collaborative approach, Cefla Finishing’s expert team analysed the needs, aligned with the company’s objectives and tailored an integrated solution that took into account all the aspects prioritised by the customer.
Alongside the more standard equipment such as sanding machines and a selection of different ovens:
- A roller coater with a special application roller that applies the basecoat to doors with shallow grooves, enabling drastically improved coating efficiency and shorter overall finishing lines and less manual handling requirements.
- A spray coating machine capable of reducing waste through overspray, also able to adopt water-based as well as solvent-based lacquers with a view to eco-friendlier future strategies.
Results
The adoption of Cefla Finishing technologies has allowed Puertas Proma to reduce lacquer consumption with the efficiency achieved by the latest spray and roller coating solutions. Product quality has improved with the soft application roller used on the roller coater, an exclusive solution pioneered by Cefla Finishing.
The customer has also embraced the use of water-based products in production, a decision that complements other achievements aimed at improving the company’s overall sustainability. For example, solar power accounting for 60% of the company’s energy consumption thanks to a 3-Megawatt solar panel array installed recently.
The value of partnership
One aspect that the customer has underlined in their testimony to Cefla’s close collaboration, is that of the total involvement from the design phase and choice of appropriate equipment, through installation, commissioning and technical support after line start-up. Other options were evaluated, but the ultimate choice fell on Cefla Finishing for the completeness of their solution.
In particular, the flexibility that can be obtained with this finishing line allows Puertas Proma to adapt to evolving market demands. Especially the demand for different colours that can be implemented without losing precious downtime.
In the video presenting this case, Fernando Quijano, Puertas Proma CEO, remarks on Cefla’s unbiased approach. “They helped us calculate and assess the installed capacity and the consumption each line would have required, so that we could really work out what the optimal investment for Proma would be in an absolutely unbiased way, simply to help us make the right decision.” Partnering a customer in the correct way extends the partnership through trust: a question of professional competence and personal relations.
