Summary
¦ Galtee manufactures kitchen and bathroom cabinets.
¦ It supplies bonded veneer MDF panels to the UK merchant sector.
¦ Its doors are manufactured under the Pronto brand name.
¦ The company is developing a high gloss ABS/vinyl bonded MDF product
The Galtee Group has come a long way since starting out as a kitchen cabinet door manufacturer just under three decades ago.
Now, the Ballylanders, Co Limerick-based company has four divisions, turns over up to €20m and is a major force in the production and supply of veneered MDF in Ireland and the UK.
When the company was set up in 1981, solid wood was being used for the door manufacture. Just a few years later, however, a certain MDF manufacturing facility was built an hour away in Clonmel and a strong relationship was established between Galtee and Medite.
MDF opened up a whole new world of applications and around the same time, Galtee branched out into bathroom cabinet manufacturing. In 1985 it started to manufacture veneered panels and has been selling these into the UK for the last 10 years.
Galtee now comprises four divisions. Galtee Wood Products manufactures solid wood kitchen doors and components for the Irish market and bathroom cabinets and components for the Irish and UK markets (B&Q is a stockist).
Galtee Veneer Bonding bonds veneer to MDF panels for the merchant sector and has counted MLM, WT Eden, Lavers and Timbmet amongst its UK customers.
It also makes specialist veneer panelling for architectural specifications and manufactures bespoke veneered FD30 and FD60 fire doors for the merchant and joinery markets.
The doors, including the fire doors, have been manufactured under the Italian-sounding “Pronto” brand name since the mid-90s. “Italy is seen as the leader in kitchen design,” explained managing director Sean Ryan.
Rising exports
More than 50% of Galtee’s fire doors are exported to the UK, a proportion that has been rising as a side effect of the slowdown in construction in Ireland and the subsequent decrease in domestic demand.
A third Galtee division, Temple Hill, makes PVC/wood-based products for the kitchen and bathroom trades, while a fourth, Troscain na Deise Teo, manufactures specialist veneers.
Veneers are sourced from all over the world and while American white oak and American black walnut account for about 60% of the mix, the company works with a palette of around 30 species and some man-made “engineered veneer”.
The veneer, most of which is 0.6mm thick, is sliced at source, bought at market – “old style horse trading” – and once back at Galtee is precision cut, defects are removed and it is bookmatched and stitched, either by thread or, increasingly, by glue. It is then glued and pressed onto the panel.
The Temple Hill division also membrane presses PVC onto MDF and, as the process uses pressure and vacuum to pull the PVC onto the panel and bond it, it can accommodate more elaborate routing, offering Galtee greater flexibility in both production and design.
Investment in its 8,500m² production facilities has been key to Galtee’s success. In 2009, “when everyone else was cutting back”, Galtee installed a new veneer production line, upgraded the main press line and added 2,000m² of warehousing.
It was a major programme that involved not only capital investment, but also skills development – the company has 90 employees – and new product research and development.
“Greater emphasis on building sustainable systems and aligning our capabilities to meet higher volume and quality standards are essential for export markets, as is improving efficiency and yield,” said Mr Ryan.
Environmental credentials
Equally important to its business are its environmental credentials and quality assurances. It already has ISO 9001 and is currently working with BM TRADA on securing Q-Mark certification. It also has FSC chain of custody, enabling it to offer FSC-certified white oak and black walnut veneered MDF “without the premium price tag” and is working to widen its range of FSC-certified veneers. Since Medite has now become CARB 2 compliant, Galtee can offer this assurance, too.
“We spend our days trying to create opportunities,” said Mr Ryan, pointing to research and development projects including a new PUR gluing system that enables high gloss ABS/vinyl to be bonded to MDF. Other projects include a prototype MDF-core internal door using Medite’s newly launched 45mm-thick product, rather than the customary chipboard, and a kit-form cabinet door. Galtee has also developed a range of high quality free-standing Irish hardwood kitchens, which it hopes will take off once the domestic market recovers.
The company isn’t short of ideas or ambition and, with son Eoin as product development manager and daughter Elaine in the sales department, Sean Ryan is confident for the future.
“Our objective is to grow the Galtee brand and make it synonymous with quality wood products,” said Mr Ryan. “We intend to develop and expand the customer base and create niche markets in added-value products.”
