Luxury door maker opens fresh route towards expansion

A Leeds-based luxury door manufacturer is celebrating a hat-trick of record years with a £400,000 new expansion and 25 new jobs.

Express Bi-folding Doors is run by a father and son team who have overseen record turnovers three years in a row – hitting £35.5m this time around – with plans to reach £50m in the next three years.

The company is now investing around £250,000 in a new business called Exterior Spaces to tap into the burgeoning outdoor market, featuring products such as a carport with solar panels for electric car charging and weatherproof pergolas with controllable roofs.

A new £150,000 showroom in Bournemouth is also set to open this autumn as part of the investment in expanding the independent brand’s footprint across the UK.

Steve Bromberg, group MD, said: “We’ve seen a huge trend in customers valuing their outdoor space, something that we’ve directly helped with through our bi-folding door products that essentially bring the outdoors in.

“As experts in aluminium, all of our products have this at their core. We expect the pergolas to be really popular, but we are also launching a carport that can incorporate solar panels, which we expect to have on display in Leeds by the end of September.

“We created Exterior Spaces because we see massive potential in not only the initial products that we’re offering, but the potential for that range to grow.

“We have the expertise, resource and infrastructure to grow the business and see no reason why it cannot grow as big as Express has – thanks to our world-class manufacturing site in Leeds and partnership with one of Europe’s leading experts on pergolas.”

Express has a team of around 300 people nationally. It expects the new Exterior Spaces business could eventually employ around 100 staff once established.

Bromberg added: “I have always said that if a business plateaus it starts to go backwards, so we are now aggressively looking for growth again.

“This has been demonstrated by opening our stunning new showroom in Glasgow in March, Bournemouth in autumn, plus this new company.

“We are focused on achieving a group-wide turnover of around £50m in the next three years which is great news for jobs and the economics we impact.”