Marlex doubles their insulating glass output with LiSEC

The company was founded in 2003 by Marian Raus and Alexander Vugrek, and the start-up grew much faster than expected. Marlex now has 260 employees and is the clear market leader in Croatia, supplying windows and doors made of aluminium, PVC, and wood-alu or PVC-alu, with revenues of 18 million euros. In recent years, the company has invested over eight million euros and nearly doubled the number of employees.

There are many reasons for this fast-paced growth. Ilija Ponjavic, Executive Director at Marlex: “We‘ve experienced high growth, and not only in the Adriatic region, where a real construction boom is happening right now, with numerous hotels being built, which creates a correspondingly high demand for insulating glass. In the last three years, EU subsidies have become available for private homes: 40% of the costs for windows and doors are being subsidised, in some regions even up to 80%. People have started to look into thermal insulation on the Internet, and there they find us, too.”

Another reason for this growth can be found in the uncompromising quality of the final products. Ponjavic: “We only work with the best. This means that products we offer to our customers as standard are referred to as ‘special’ by other companies. For example, the Energeto 4S window.”

4S stands for 4 seasons, which means pleasant temperatures year-round. According to Marlex, this solution's G value is 30% better than conventional glass in the summer. And the export market? Ponjavic: “Originally, we planned on having more export business, but the demand in Croatia is so high that we can’t export more than 35%.” When Marlex windows and doors leave Croatia, they are bound for Italy, France, Germany, Slovenia, and Austria.

THE LEAP INTO INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION

The year is 2006. Business has increased so much that glass suppliers can no longer keep up. Local IG manufacturers have reached their limits, and Marlex can no longer make deliveries, which causes a lot of headaches for the still rapidly growing windows and doors manufacturer near Varaždin. Because of this, the management at Marlex decided to produce their own insulating glass. They started to compare manufacturers and looked at many IG factories.

“The factories with LiSEC systems always stood out: sophisticated, automated, everything from a single provider. Of course, being close to Austria helps the business, but the quality, reliability, and good reputation on the market were the factors that made the decision for us,” continues Ponjavic.

As growth kept going strongly in the following years, another decision needed to be made. Ponjavic: “We decided to expand our production once again, in order to reach a capacity of 440 IG units per shift – and 70% of that are triple IG units. Plastic window production was state-of-the-art back then, and that set the benchmark for IG production: high quality, a high degree of automation, and a high output.”

This is how Marlex successfully made the leap into industrial production. “With this last investment in new IG systems including spacer benders, our choice was easy: It was clear right from the start that we would be purchasing from LiSEC again,” explains Ponjavic.