By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
Hallam-based company Dorma Australia has more sliding door moments than most.
In short, it makes the drive-units that open and close automated doors.
Its Pacific Region operations manager Nick Meyers said the company, with 152 workers at Hallam, turns over $100 million-plus a year.
Dorma was a finalist at the recent Victorian Manufacturing Hall of Fame Awards.
It survives and thrives by offering the best quality product, Mr Meyers said.
“Our doors carry more weight than any other in the market.”
The first such mechanism – then driven by a motorbike chain – was invented by BWN Industries in Australia in the 1960s. BWN has since been absorbed into Dorma’s operations.
The company’s point of difference is to manufacture specifically for each customer such as Apple stores, Mr Meyers said.
Some of its major projects are all over the world.
They include 140 doors at Changi Airport Terminal Four, up to 100 doors in the Saudi Riyadh financial district and 100-plus doors at King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddeh.
Domestically, Dorma’s customers include Sunshine Coast University Hospital, New Royal Adelaide Hospital, Crown Towers in Perth, Collins Street Towers in Melbourne and 580 George Street in Sydney.
Mr Meyers said manufacturing is hard in Australia.
“You have to be smart in what you do,” he said.
There’s care to have lean manufacturing processes, not to double-handle orders but to get it right first time, he said.
Dorma itself started in Germany and was owned by the original family for about a century.
The company is now perhaps facing its own sliding doors moment with the formal merger with global security group Kaba on 1 July.
