Advice

Make more profit with trade aluminium bi-fold doors

Energy Efficiency of Aluminium Bi-folding Doors

Guide to Selling bifolds

Infinium: Truly Slimline Glazing

No Title

How we work with Installers 

How-to guides

Tools for the Professionals

Commercial Casement Windows

Sliding Doors

New Year Message from Russell Yates, Managing Director

How to Fit Roof Lanterns

How to Install Aluminium Sliding Doors

Terms & Conditions

AluFoldDirect Aluminium Installer Training Academy

Slimline Casement Windows

Trade aluminium bi-fold doors delivered direct to site

Modern aluminium bifold doors for new build projects

Bi-Fold Doors

Commercial Curtain Walling

Technical Files

Should I Choose a Flat Rooflight or Roof Lantern for My Project?

Our Story

Take your designs to the next level with Infinium minimal frame sliding doors

New Opportunities with Flush

Installer-friendly contemporary front doors

Windows

Fitter friendly, fully aluminium roof lanterns

AluFoldDirect launches Aluminium Installer Training Academy

New Technic-AL Flat Rooflight Launched

Benefits of Technic-AL Rooflights for flat roofs 

Support for installers on big aluminium glazing projects 

Corner Doors

Trade supply aluminium entrance doors delivered direct to site

Flush Casement Windows

How we work with Homeowners

Find an installer

Other Ranges

AluFoldDirect gets a double win at G-Awards 

Made to measure aluminium bi-fold doors for large spaces

Russell Yates Joins AluFoldDirect

Creating the perfect arched windows with our shaped glazing service

Commercial Tilt & Turn Window

Commercial Smoke Vent Window

Technical Drawings

Heading to the Summit

Flat Rooflights

How to Order Aluminium Bifold Doors

Doors

Commercial doors

Transform Homes with Aluminium Flat Rooflight Kits from AluFoldDirect

Commercial High Traffic Thermally Broken Doors

Data Sheets

Free Guide to Fitting Aluminium Bi-Fold Doors

SBD Commercial Doors, perfect for schools, delivered in 2 weeks

Inline Sliding Doors

Commercial Products

Seven Design Features of Bi-fold Doors

Fixed Frame Windows

Aluminium Sliding Patio Doors

Roofs

Choosing Colours for Aluminium Folding Doors

Choosing an aluminium sliding door supplier for your next project

Growing Team at AluFoldDirect

Get the most out of the growing aluminium roof lanterns market with AluFoldDirect

Everything Aluminium proves popular at The Build 

AluFoldDirect named triple finalist in regional awards 

AluFoldDirect shortlisted for 3 more awards

AluFoldDirect launches AluK’s Infinium minimal frame glazing 

Get ahead of the game

Take on larger aluminium jobs with our aluminium glazing projects management service

Frequently asked questions

AluFoldDirect Goes Back to Play School

AluFoldDirect Aluminium Installer Training Academy News

Bay Windows

Secured by Design

Add Contemporary Style with New Venlo RD2 Entrance Doors

Single Doors

2 Week Lead Times on Everything Aluminium 

All Ranges

Double Award Win for AluFoldDirect

Roof Lanterns

Contact

AluFoldDirect Named Double Finalist at the G18 Awards

Bring light to homes all year round with aluminium windows

Prestigious housing development oozes charm thanks to AluFoldDirect 

Tilt & Turn Windows

Blog

Why choose aluminium window frames for your next project?

Profitable business growth with aluminium 

AluFoldDirect delivers luxury residential development

AluFoldDirect named Manufacturing Company of the Year

Making it easier to trade your PVCu for aluminium glazing 

AluFoldDirect transforms a multi-million-pound development near Manchester 

Online investment set to drive growth for customers

The top home improvement trend of 2018: Slimline aluminium windows

Design Centre

AluFoldDirect Aluminium Glazing Projects

Aluminium Installer Training Academy

‘Everything Aluminium Without the Pain’ at The Build Show

From the back of a Gunroom to aluminium glazing specialist 

Slimline Bifold Doors

What M Davenport Builders Says About Working With AluFoldDirect

AluFoldDirect Goes Through the Arched Window 

Aluminium glazing certainty 

How We Work with Architects and Specifiers 

Infinium Sliding Doors

Benefit from bifold doors in aluminium 

Cookies & Privacy Policy

Open Plan Living with Bi-folding Doors

Rules and Regulations

Security Features of Bifold Doors

Fast delivery on aluminium bifold doors from AluFoldDirect

French Doors

Achieve your design visions with aluminium bifold doors  

AluFoldDirect fits out new showroom at Just Value Doors

AluFoldDirect teams up with Italian designers to deliver £2.4m refurbishment for Krones Group

Aluminium Bi-fold Doors for Home Refurbishments

Lift and Slide Doors

Refresh your aluminium bifold doors installation skills with our aluminium training

Benefits of using an aluminium bi-fold door supplier

For the best, go direct.

10 Year Guarantee

Entrance Doors

Gets our vote!

AluFoldDirect teams with GlassRooms Architectural Glazing Limited to create bespoke £40k glass extension in Cheshire 

Gable Windows

How to Guides

Quality aluminium doors, windows, roofing and glazing for installers and builders, architects and specifiers.

Grow your business with us

Made to enable growth

With our new instant quote tool

Quote faster, fit faster

Discover our products

Lighten up your living space

 and glazing for installers, builders, architects and specifiers.

Fit the best

Transform your home

Get a brochure here

Installer Training Academy

Technical files

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered from hands on training facility to our useful ‘how-to’ guides.

New to aluminium?

Keep up to date with all the latest Alufold and industry news on our dedicated blog. 

How developers can benefit from our dedicated Aluminium Glazing Project team

If you’re taking on a domestic or commercial, new-build construction or larger-scale refurbishment job, bring certainty to your project by dealing directly with the fabricator.

Designed for developers like you, our dedicated Aluminium Glazing Projects Service provides essential project management services, offering design support, with right-first-time aluminium glazing that’s delivered on-time and in budget.

Essential support from your dedicated Aluminium Glazing Project team

By working directly alongside installers, architects, designers, specifiers and developers over the years, we have come to understand the ins and outs of delivering glazing projects along with challenges you may face.

Our Aluminium Glazing Projects service has been developed to offer you dedicated project management to guarantee the delivery of your latest aluminium glazing job.

From design, right through to completion, the Projects team are available to provide expert advice, along with essential support to ensure that your project runs as smoothly as possible.

You will have one single point of contact in the Projects team, who will support you every step of the way, from initial discussion and job specific design specification, to individual itemised products being delivered on a site specific, achievable delivery strategy.

The Projects team work directly with our fabrication team, ensuring that any unique requirements for your project are met and to eliminate any mis-measures or mis-fit errors.

When your aluminium glazing project reaches the installation stage, we co-ordinate a planned delivery strategy to ensure all products arrive on time, right-first time, every time. With on-site experience, our Projects team can identify any installation skills gaps and offer hands-on training for sub-contractors and installers at our Aluminium Glazing Installation Academy.

We have a full range of aluminium glazing solutions to assist with a variety of building projects of any size and complexity.

Suited to domestic and commercial applications, for refurbishments, renovations and new-builds, the Everything Aluminium range features bifolding doors, sliding doors, roof lanterns, flat roof lightsand slimline windows.

Everything Aluminium is manufactured in our state-of-the-art factory in Blackburn, using high quality, high performance slimline profiles, in only 1 week for unglazed units and 2 weeks for glazed. We always deliver in a non-branded van directly to site, across the UK.

Visit our Everything Aluminium range in person

You can see our Everything Aluminium range at the AluFoldDirect Aluminium Glazing Design Centrelocated at our HQ in Blackburn – it’s the only dedicated aluminium glazing showroom outside of London!

We have full-sized displays of our windows, doors and latest innovations, making it ideal to see how our aluminium glazing looks, get a feel for the product and understand how it functions in person. It’s a great place to come and meet the Aluminium Glazing Projects team, discuss the requirements for your project and get advice and guidance on the best products for the job.

A selection of our Aluminium Glazing Projects

If you’re wondering if we can help with your next project, see what can be achieved with help from our Aluminium Glazing Projects team! Our Projects team have worked with customers on some amazing developments, including new-build homes and office block refurbishments.

We teamed with Italian designers Brown & Bancroft Interiors to deliver this £2.4m refurbishment project for Krones Group. Our slimline aluminium window units were used to add light and space throughout the property.

From office-block to luxury apartments, Bridgewater House was transformed in this multi-million-pound canal-side development near Manchester. We supplied our aluminium glazing to create 60 modern flats.

If you have a project that would benefit from our dedicated Aluminium Glazing Projects Service, or you would like to find out more information, get in touch with us! You can call us on 01706 260700, email 

, complete our online form, or if you are in the local area, drop by our Aluminium Glazing Design Centre for a cuppa!

Clearly then, if we all think we’re busy already, we’ve really seen nothing yet. Up until now, it’s been fairly easy for suppliers who are struggling to cope with demand to argue that no one could have predicted the current market and, to an extent, that’s true. But, more than a year since the end of the first lockdown, those excuses are wearing a bit thin.

Certainly, this is the point at which installation businesses need to look at how well their suppliers have been able to secure their supply chain up until now; and make careful judgments about whether that feels robust enough to withstand what we all know is on its way.

The aluminium sector has arguably weathered the storm much more successfully than PVC-U, and certainly lead times for aluminium are shorter now than they are for PVC-U for probably the first time ever. That’s not just down to luck though – it’s been about the right decisions being made at the right time – by both systems houses and fabricators.

As we look ahead at what is still to come and hear from builders and installers who have full order books well into 2022, I think we could potentially see a tsunami of orders in the third and particularly the fourth quarter of this year. If that is the case, then it will be the suppliers who had the financial strength and the confidence to invest during the worst of the crisis in 2020 who will best be able to cope.

When I joined AluFold Direct from AluK in May 2020, our priority wasn’t to batten down the hatches as some of our competitors were doing, or even just to try and keep up with the demand which greeted us on the reopening from the first lockdown, but to put in place the measures required to really ramp up our output well beyond that. We’ve got big plans to grow as a business and to take our customers with us on that journey, and we were already planning on opening the additional factory here in Blackburn which will now come on stream in September.

However, we also had the foresight, the buying power and, above all the strong relationships required to secure guaranteed volumes of components from our key suppliers in aluminium, hardware, consumables and crucially glass for the whole of 2021. And we are now seeing that proactive approach pay off.

For instance, we were already dual sourcing on glass, but we took the decision last December to switch from one of those suppliers to a more reliable alternative, while still splitting our sourcing between Saint Gobain and Pilkingtons. Even for the biggest hitters, there’s obviously only so much volume of stock to go around, particularly in glass, so allocations have to be made but, for any fabricators who haven’t already secured their allocations for the rest of this year, I would say that it’s probably too late.

I’ve heard plenty of people from right across the industry saying that they are so busy at the moment that there’s just no breathing space and no opportunity to take stock and do what’s necessary to increase capacity and reduce lead times. My advice to installers then is not to choose a fabricator who is playing catch up with the market, but to choose one that’s already ahead of the game.

The Bank of England has just raised its estimate for UK GDP growth in 2021 to 7.25% - up from the 5% it forecast in February. Further easing of restrictions, it says, will pave the way for a boom in pent-up demand.

Alongside that, construction industry data from the Purchasing Managers’ Index shows that orders in the construction market are already increasing at the fastest rate since it started reporting the figures in 1997.

For customers though, despite the vast amount of change which is actually taking place, it will largely have felt like business as usual so far – with the same consistently fast and reliable service and the same reassuring guarantee of any product, in any colour, delivered anywhere in the UK.

Now however, some of the first innovations that Russell and the team are introducing are being rolled out to customers, and there is a growing sense of excitement about how these will help companies who choose AluFold Direct as their supply partner achieve really meaningful growth.

There is a new brand and a new website to help communicate the scale of the transformation happening and a game changing new online ‘quick quote’ tool on the website designed to make the AluFold Direct service even smarter and more user friendly.

 enables customers to get an instant trade price for nearly every product in the AluFold Direct range – from windows, entrance doors and bi-folds to lanterns, sliders, rooflights and commercial doors.

All that users need to do is enter in their sizes, select glazed or unglazed and standard or non-standard colours and the tool will calculate the price and send it instantly by email. There’s a step-by-step guide included which walks users through the quote builder tool, a handy guide to help them choose the right spec for each project and a survey template to make sure they don’t miss anything.

Russell Yates explained: “We’re taking all the hassle out of quote building for our customers. They can get an instant price straight to their inbox and log in as many times as they like to change the spec whenever suits them. Obviously, if they need a more detailed quote on a particularly large project, they can simply upload their own survey files and one of our team will get straight back to them.”

The tool sits on the trade section of the new website. Retail buyers who visit the site are directed to a dedicated ‘Find An Installer’ section and prompted to enter their details to help generate additional leads for AluFold Direct customers.

Russell added: “This is a more capable and comprehensive tool than anything else out there for quoting in aluminium at the moment and hopefully serves as a powerful statement of intent in terms of how we will be approaching the market in 2021 and beyond. We have huge ambitions for this business and part of that will come from providing customers with a really useful and valuable set of support tools, which will help them make the most of the opportunities available in aluminium while making their lives as easy as possible.”

AluFold Direct is set to reveal more of its plans over the coming weeks and months, including a new cloud-based customer pricing portal and some radical product developments and sustainability initiatives.

A lot has been happening behind the scenes at AluFold Direct since last May, when Russell Yates was appointed Managing Director. Much of that has been focused around driving operational efficiencies, expanding the team, and investing and equipping a new factory which is set to open soon

 projects, for which we supplied our signature 

 at the Homebuilding & Renovating Awards.

Here's what Colin Price, Director at James Price Group, had to say about working with AluFold Direct:

Thanks to Alufold’s manufacturing quality and time frame we were able to fulfil the homeowner and clients needs successfully.

You can read all about the exquisite project 

 and also, most importantly make sure you vote for it 

We were over the moon when our customer, the 

 got in touch with some very exciting news!

We launched our new look this month and we’re using the 

 as part of our campaign to build awareness not just of the new logo but of what it stands for in the market.

For Managing Director Russell Yates, it’s about showing both existing and potential customers that AluFold Direct is a company undergoing an exciting transformation. We have big ambitions to change the way aluminium windows and doors are supplied into the trade market and we want to show existing and potential customers how that could benefit them directly.

A new factory, new processes and smart new service initiatives are designed to make buying aluminium windows and doors as simple as buying PVC-U, giving installers a great opportunity to build their businesses in partnership with AluFold Direct.

Russell commented: “The Glazing Summit has quickly become one of the highest profile events in the industry calendar and we’re really pleased that we’ll have such a visible presence this time around.”

Delegates at this year’s Glazing Summit will be sporting a new brand on their lanyards – thanks to sponsorship from AluFold Direct.

More than 160 frames and 300 specialist glazing units were supplied to construction company, Heatley Developments.

The one-year refit, called POPworks, transformed a former solicitor’s office into luxury one and two bedroom apartments, with state-of-the-art smart home technology.

After it was voted a top place to live by The Times newspaper, buyers snapped up every apartment - before a single brick was laid!

As part of the plan to create a contemporary living space, Heatley Developments kept the existing façade of the historic building complete with exposed brickwork and original features. Inside, designers celebrated Manchester’s industrial heritage and included external balconies and some floor to ceiling windows – successfully combining the best of old and new.