New workshop high-speed doors for a high-end car museum

Home to some of the world’s rarest and most sought-after vehicles, it’s important for Autohaven Museum to keep its collection safe. In need of new doors for its Christchurch museum and workshop, the EFA-SST high-speed spiral doors from EFAFLEX were the ultimate choice. 

Autohaven was already aware of EFAFLEX as a global leading brand for high-speed doors and arranged a site visit to fully explain their requirements. 

“When considering the best door for our automotive museum and workshop, there were specific criteria we needed. With around $40m worth of vehicles, it was imperative that we had the most reliable door that provided the ultimate in protection, safety and reliability, as well as good technical support,” says Autohaven’s Matt Sheppard. “Security, strength, speed and safety were all important, as well as the ability to integrate our personal security hardware. The EFAFLEX door was the obvious choice, with a New Zealand reputation that met all our criteria.”

Brian Hill, EFAFLEX’s Australasian Sales Manager, says this was an interesting project for the team.

“We are often asked for our help to design high-speed doors around automotive facilities. That can range from doors at the entrance and exit points of car parks, or showrooms and workshops. But this collection of supercars, classics, and motorcycles is unique. Some of these pieces are irreplaceable and therefore it was a privilege to assist Autohaven.”

• Cutting-edge insulation: EFAFLEX offers thermally separated EFA-THERM insulation laths for the EFA-SST as standard. Depending on the door size, this allows for outstanding thermal insulation values of between 0.66 and 1.52 W/m²K to be achieved. “Thanks to the fast opening and closing speeds of our industrial high-speed doors, little energy is lost to the outside or between two rooms,” says Hill. 
• Versatile door leaf: The door leaf for the EFAFLEX industrial door is extraordinarily robust, tight and sound-insulating. The required number of EFA-CLEAR transparent laths for your EFA-SST can be determined according to the desired amount of vision. “The EFAFLEX spiral does not wind the door blade onto a shaft, but keeps it at a distance to save space,” says Hill. This design optimally combines highest opening speeds, durability and effectiveness. 
• Individual design: In addition to the standard aluminium coating, EFAFLEX can coat the door’s laths and steel parts in almost any colour from the RAL system on request. This way, the doors can be perfectly adapted to any project’s architecture and facade design, complementing a commercial client’s brand identity. 
• Variable solutions: “Our high-speed spiral doors have the circular round spiral, the best solution for the fastest opening and closing times, as a standard,” says Hill. “If the space above the door is limited, you can also choose between two space-saving variants for many door types of the S series – oval spiral and low lintel.”
• High-end safety technology: “As a leading manufacturer of high-speed doors, it is our aspiration to also be pioneers in the field of safety. All EFAFLEX products meet the highest standards and protect both people and the goods, as well as the door itself. It is not only our industrial doors that impress with their state-of-the-art safety technology, but also the associated systems. EFA-SCAN, for example, is the world’s first laser scanner for use on doors, which is a reliable pulse generator and safety systems in one.”

“Knowing we have a mechanically interlocked door system with laths that are solid and appear impenetrable, we feel safe knowing that the EFAFLEX door is protecting our assets when we leave the museum after locking up,” says Sheppard. 

“When moving our vehicles in and out of the museum, having a high-speed door with a TLG safety light curtain allows us to quickly open a door, move out the asset, and then quickly and safely slide the door. This ensures minimal exposure of the assets inside and out to the weather, dust and debris.”

This is also important when conducting tours for visitors at Autohaven. 

“With all the visitors we have to our museum, we normally conduct a workshop tour as well. This allows us to demonstrate, on a good weather day, the workshop door fully opening in seconds – allowing mass pedestrian access into our workshop. We receive many comments on the doors from amazed people witnessing such an impressively fast and quiet industrial roller door, and we explain all these reasons why we installed them.” 

EFAFLEX supplies to many of the world’s leading brands including Porsche, BMW and Audi. The brand’s high-speed doors are designed bespoke to assist the automotive industry – with products including machine protection doors along production lines, high-speed doors for use at loading bays and throughout warehouses, and roll-up fabric curtain options for internal applications such as paint booths. Each door brings benefits to the user, whether it be improved user safety, a reduction in energy costs through thermal insulation, or driving logistics performance.

Explore the range of EFAFLEX products for your next commercial project. 

Disclaimer: EFA-SST, EFA-THERM and EFA-CLEAR are registered trademarks of EFAFLEX.