Whole Life Sustainability – EFAFLEX have you covered!

By EFAFLEX UK Limited
schedule15th Jul 19

Sustainability – the avoidance of depleting natural resources to maintain an ecological balance. We all need to play our part in business, whether it's environmental, economic, social or governance. With energy costs rising, and more goods being purchased online, this will undoubtedly lead to an increase in logistics and movement of goods, which can mean higher emissions and more packaging to protect goods whilst in transit. Here global market leaders in high-speed doors EFAFLEX, summarise what they are doing in order to help reduce emissions, lower client’s energy usage, and minimize waste to landfill.

Darren Turrell, Managing Director for the UK explains, ‘We have looked at EVERY aspect during the whole life of our products, right from the design phase to the eventual end of life, we have considered it all; the raw materials and methods we use to manufacture our high-speed doors, the packaging they are transported in, the net results and energy saving  benefits they are designed to deliver.’

Taking each aspect one by one Turrell continued, ‘Our products are built to last. As a company, we started designing high-speed doors back in 1974, and there are some that are still in operation today. They are as old as us! In this ‘throw away’ society of ours, we still value the ‘make do and mend’ mentality of the war era. Our products are robust and built to perform up to 250,000 operating cycles per year. This means less costly downtime, fewer service and maintenance visits, and doors needing to be replaced less frequently than lower quality alternatives. The raw materials we use are carefully considered to last and be recycled at the end of life. The major door components are steel and aluminium with c95% of our product intended to be recyclable.’

Reduce energy bills by up to 50%

EFAFLEX produce the fastest vertically opening door in the world. With door opening speeds of up to 4 meters per second, this fast action has a significant benefit – reducing exposure to the elements. This minimizes the need to heat or manage cool areas in climate-controlled environments such as warehouses, cleanroom applications, and food production by up to a staggering 50%. Think of the knock-on benefits too, that of reducing CO2 emissions, making the working environment more comfortable for staff, and it becomes easy to calculate the whole life financial and environmental benefits that EFAFLEX can deliver,

Insulation is key

Take the product design one stage further and look at some of the unique features that EFAFLEX have designed to aid sustainability. The innovative EFA-THERM insulation laths for example that can deliver values of up to 0.66 W/m2K in operating temperatures of ±30 degrees Celsius.

Look closer at the control boxes and boards that drive the door motion, which are low energy, requiring quick, short bursts to power the door opening. At the end of life, they can be recycled in line with the WEEE directive. There’s virtually nothing about an EFAFLEX door that can’t be recycled and that includes the packaging too which has been carefully considered to reduce the amount of waste to landfill.

Sustainability has been considered in many aspects here; the longevity and durability of the door meaning that it doesn’t need to be replaced as frequently, the energy saving costs that the door can deliver and emissions too, the recyclability, the insulation properties. The list is long.

It makes economic sense

Turrell concluded, ‘We encourage people to do the maths and look at their high-speed door as an investment which makes long term economic and environmental sense. By that we mean, factor in the initial cost of the high-speed door. For sure it will initially be more expensive than a traditional sectional overhead door or roller shutter, but then add in the operating costs (servicing, upkeep, maintenance, and downtime) and energy bills, and on total balance, the EFAFLEX high-speed door will be more cost effective and sustainable, for many years to come, of that we are confident!’.

Speed. Energy savings. Exceptional service life. Sustainability. All combined in one whole life solution.


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