Dealing with imported products, particularly those from world regions known for their ability to produce cost-competitive products, is often a big challenge for UK manufacturers.

In May, TTJ featured the success story of Devon-based sawmill machinery manufacturer Stenner, which is exporting its machines all around the world.

Now we turn our attention to Morland in Welshpool and the door production sector. The company produces internal doors, profiles and decorative panels, and has invested heavily in technology. It is making some bold claims about its capabilities.

In its own words, Morland admits that its claim to manufacture – in the UK – the best value fully-finished timber fire door in the global door industry, is “big talk” when set against Asian competition. Its recent launch into the fire door sector stems from several reasons, explained Morland commercial director Andrew Warren.

“Demand for factory-finished product is ever increasing,” he said.

“The entry into the UK housing market of investors such as the Chinese WElink Group and British financial institution Legal & General, told us offsite construction was changing.

“Specifications for internal doors in homes built to rent are often different to those in homes built to sell. We could see there would be increased demand for durable, fully finished doors supplied just-in-time to the production line.”

ABS Edge Banding

Morland has been using ABS edgebanding on Egger’s melamine-faced chipboard skinned, hollow core doors since 2013. Customer feedback confirmed its belief that this produced a door which looked good, was of good value and matched with Egger’s furniture board.

On this basis the company started a project to see if it could use Egger’s UK production of melamine faced fire door blanks, and edge band them as well.

“Financially speaking we knew that having Egger combine the door blank production with the application of the face décor in a single operation was a step change in the cost of the door production,” added Mr Warren.

“We also knew that we could lip doors on all four edges with ABS quicker than we could lip two long edges in timber, and we could also eradicate the need to finish the lipping on site.”

At the end of last year, Morland commissioned a purpose-built edge banding line to apply ABS lipping directly to the core on all four sides as standard.

So, three years after first using ABS edge banding on hollow core doors and a quarter of a million pounds of investment later, Morland fire doors was launched.

Morland managing director James Morris said good value products would always take market share, but the compromise in swapping from timber to ABS lipping was that the door leaf width could not be changed on site.

“Ten years ago, that would have made the market opportunity quite small. Today, with fire doors commonly being supplied as sets, it really only restricts the door’s use in the refurbishment market,” he said.

“Our market research told us that as long as the bottom of the door could still be trimmed and the doors can have a leading edge, the proposal was attractive.”

BWF Certifire Testing

Pre-production doors needed to be fire tested and the BWF Certifire scheme was chosen, which required sampling at Egger’s plant in Hexham as well as in Morland’s factories in Welshpool.

“Morland wanted to guarantee its credibility in offering safe fire doors,” added Mr Warren.

“We know that the market will be concerned that the doors are not hardwood lipped so we went for the gold standard [BWF Certifire]”.

The tests to BS476 part 22 were passed at Exova and a scope was issued that was fit-for-purpose for the target market.

Critically, the leading edge could be applied during the manufacturing stage to the customer’s specification and the bottom of the door can be trimmed on site if needed whilst maintaining certification.

Staff training is ongoing across the workforce to ensure the BWF Certifire scheme principles are fully understood.

Morland has created a programme that follows up initial training with testing three months later to evaluate understanding and safeguard production standards.

Morland has also invested significant time and effort in producing marketing support.

Egger is well known for its MFC and matching laminate, but awareness of the ability to work with Egger’s material to produce pedestrian doors is much lower.

“The stars aligned for the launch of Morland as a primary door manufacturer with a once every five-year range overhaul from Egger,” said Morland marketing manager Sam Jones.

The total range from Egger is more than 300 decors and Morland says it can offer 120 of those decors on a short lead-time from UK stock, with matching furniture board available from UK stockists.

A 64-page A4 brochure and CPD presentation has also been produced.

Customer Reaction

Morland says customer reaction to the new doors has been very encouraging.

It cited the example of modular builder Elliott Group. Morland has been supplying fully finished doorsets to the company for some time. Historically, imported doors were used in production.

After presenting the Morland door to a meeting comprised of Elliott’s technical, production, purchasing and sales personnel, the reaction was a resounding “yes”.

Morland says that other offsite builders have been showing strong interest and placing orders. The company already supplies 1,000 hollow core doors a week to the market and predicts that it won’t be long before the business hits that level on fire doors as well.

“In 2027, what share of the UK housebuilding market will be manufactured offsite is a guessing game,” it said. “What is more certain is that Morland will have established its door offer founded on UK production. Once we reach the other side of Brexit that could be very useful indeed.”

Morland said architects now have the ability to match the door to other furniture elements in the room to create a co-ordinated interior.

The edgebanded doors, it added, also look better than exposed lipped doors, which are the norm for this method of construction.

“In becoming a primary door manufacturer, we were not looking to develop as an expensive niche market supplier,” said Mr Morris.

“Morland has harnessed the cost-effectiveness of MFC production and sought to deliver a fire door solution for the mainstream fully-finished door market.

“We have been benchmarked by large players in the rapidly expanding offsite construction sector so we are confident our ‘globally competitive’ claim stands up to scrutiny”.