South Africa’s drive for reduced energy consumption should include optimising the efficiency of energy usage across entire supply chains. This is according to Wim Dessing, sales executive at Apex Strip Curtains & Doors, who says the company is seeing an increased call for its technical personnel to assess the functionality of doors being used across manufacturing, warehouse and other storage facilities.

“Long gone are the days of leaving large openings in these types of facilities without any form of closing,” Dessing says. “High speed roll up doors are a popular solution as these allow for rapid opening and closing, and facilitate a more controlled ambient temperature inside a manufacturing or warehousing facility. This contributes significantly to reducing energy costs and ensuring employee comfort.

“Temperature and humidity control are enhanced through the elimination of excessive through flow of warm or cold exterior air into the workspace. As an added benefit, due to their speed of operation, high speed doors reduce the influx of insects and other airborne contaminants that negatively impact on product quality,” Dessing says.

“The doors also offer longer operating life and high safety standards. As a result, our customers see an excellent return on investment while ensuring a better operating environment for personnel.”

Unhindered traffic flow remains a primary concern for businesses. The Apex range of high speed doors incorporates a counterweighted balancing system that not only ensures high standards of performance and safety but also provides fast, semi-automatic reopening.

These high speed doors offer both functionality and performance. They are unobtrusive, yet able to cope with the intensive demands of heavy and continuous traffic. The design features the integration of the actuator, controls, safety devices and balancing systems in one unit for cost efficiency and a reduced footprint.

Doors are available for medium and large entrances, and Dessing says that it is important to consider the size of opening, frequency of opening and closing and the volume of vehicular traffic when selecting a high speed door.

“Our competent team works closely with customers to find a solution that will provide a good cost to performance ratio, and ensure that the most appropriate high speed door is selected for the application,” Dessing concludes.