Iceland – the North-European home to volcanoes, geysers and extreme weather conditions. The harsh wind blowing from the surrounding sea is accompanied by rain, snow and exceptionally cold temperatures.
The weather conditions are everyday life for locals, but set special requirements for the country’s buildings and their doors.
"Withstanding high wind loads is a crucial requirement here. That is the first feature local customers ask about. For some, thermal insulation is also a key element to ensure good working conditions, the condition of the machines as well as sustaining the functions that go on inside the building", says Eðvarð Ingi Björgvinsson, CEO of Hedinn, a parent company for Hedins Hurdir.
Hedins Hurdir is the biggest manufacturer and seller of residential and industrial doors in Iceland. Hedins Hurdir’s cooperation with Champion Door started when a customer in the aluminum industry reached out to them, looking to renew the extra-large doors in their building. The old doors were made of steel, which made them quite heavy and expensive. The hatch-like doors were also sensitive to corrosion, which is a problem particularly in Iceland: the surrounding sea and the volcanic gases in the air cause metal to corrode exceptionally fast. The old steel doors also did not have the required safety features, making them unapproved to be used in the building in question.
"With the old doors, a lot could have gone wrong. Because of the size of the doors, we contacted Champion Door. Now, the building has an extra corrosion-proof Champion Door fold-up door, fully installed and tested. The product meets all of the customer’s requirements, which has led to them requesting for six more doors. They will be installed in the summer."
According to Björgvinsson, the installation for the already-installed door went according to plan. The process was completed in less than 24 hours and with a high level of expertise.
"Everything had been prepared extremely well. We were so pleased that we requested for the same engineer for the coming installations. There will also be more installations in the summer: a local thermal plant needed the doors of their new building to be corrosion-resistant and large in size, to which we immediately recommended Champion Door as the solution."
Hedins Hurdir and Champion Door have cooperated for a about a year. Björgvinsson has been happy with the cooperation. He is assured that Champion Door doors are a much-needed addition to the product selection in the field in Iceland. Hedins Hurdir delivers around 1100 doors every year, a lot of them to local industrial companies and to government services like the fire department and the police.
"There is definitely a market for these doors. We had been looking for products like Champion Door’s for a while but could not find a supplier that was able to provide them. Now that we have Champion Door as a partner, our scope is complete."