Maite Orbaiz Iriarte
Managing director
Since 2019, after twelve years in the sales network. Runs the relationship with the fabricators and everything to do with dates and commitments.
Company
Forty years making profile. Not one window.
ORBAIZ designs and extrudes systems. We do not make windows and we do not install them: the fabricator does, and the fabricator is our customer. It is a boring distinction until something goes wrong on site, and then it is the only one that matters.
Javier Orbaiz opened a metalwork shop in Pamplona in 1984. He bought standard profile and made windows, like everyone else. In 1991 he ordered his first die because nothing on the market solved a junction an architect had asked for, and from there the business turned itself inside out.
By 1997 we had stopped making windows altogether. The press at Noáin came on line and the company began selling to firms that until then had been competitors. It was an uncomfortable decision for about three years and an obvious one afterwards.
Today we are 212 people and 36 series in the catalogue. We work with 240 approved fabricators in Spain, France, Portugal and the Maghreb, and 41 % of what leaves the press crosses a border.
What separates us from a large systems house is not the catalogue, it is the telephone. A site manager calling at seven in the evening because a mullion does not line up speaks to someone who drew that section.
- Founded
- 1984
- Employees
- 212
- Floor area
- 36,000 m²
- Export share
- 41 %
- Fabricators
- 240
What happened over four decades
- 1984
A metalwork shop
Javier Orbaiz opens in Pamplona with three staff. Bought-in profile, windows made to measure, and thermally broken aluminium still absent from almost every project.
- 1991
The first die of our own
A facade junction nothing on the market solved. A die is ordered to make a single profile. That profile ends up being sold to three other workshops.
- 1997
Extrusion press at Noáin
1,800 tonnes, and a move to the Talluntxe estate. The company stops making windows and starts supplying the firms that make them.
- 2003
First thermally broken series
The ORB P60, on an 18 mm bar. Uf of 3.9 W/m²K, which seemed a lot then and is now what any window due for replacement has.
- 2009
Our own test rig
Air, water and wind to EN 1026, EN 1027 and EN 12211 in house. Finding out whether a gasket works stops meaning a six-week wait for a laboratory.
- 2014
Coating and anodising on site
QUALICOAT and QUALANOD approvals. Finish stops being a subcontractor's lead time and dual colour stops being an expensive extra.
- 2019
Second generation
Maite Orbaiz takes over as managing director. The approved fabricator network reaches 210 and the Bordeaux office opens.
- 2024
Low carbon aluminium and EPDs
Billet with 75 % recycled content and a third-party verified environmental product declaration per series to EN 15804. Tenders are starting to ask for it, and no longer only in northern Europe.
Who decides
Four people with a name and a direct extension. In a systems company, whoever picks up the phone mid-afternoon is worth more than the whole catalogue.
Íñigo Lizarraga
Technical director
Industrial engineer. Responsible for series development, thermal simulation and the test rig. If a Uf appears on this website, he signed it off.
Cristina Ayerra
Specification and architectural support
Building engineer. Resolves window schedules, issues sections and BIM objects, and says early when an opening will not comply however many series you try.
Gorka Etxeberria
Production and extrusion
Twenty-six years on the press. Die shop, extrusion, heat treatment and finishing. Decides what ships and what goes back into the melt.
One plant, one press
Everything we supply leaves Noáin: die shop, press, thermal break line, coating and anodising under one roof. We have no second plant and buy no profile from third parties. That caps how fast we can grow, and it is why approving new fabricators runs on a waiting list.
ORBAIZ Sistemas de Aluminio, S.A.Polígono Talluntxe II, Calle M 2431110 Noáin (Navarra)Spain- Floor area
- 36,000 m²
- Extrusion press
- 1,800 t
- Finishing
- coating + anodising
- Test rig
- up to 2,400 Pa
We are never overstaffed on the press
Extruded aluminium is a trade with a hard succession problem: between die shop, press and heat treatment it takes three years to bring someone up. So we hire with margin, train in house and pay the night shift for what it is. Of the 212 people on site, 58 have been here more than fifteen years.
Send a speculative applicationOpen positions
- Specification engineerFull time · Noáin
- Product engineer — thermal simulationFull time · R&D
- Extrusion press operatorThree shifts · Noáin
- Area sales manager, LevanteTravelling · Valencia
- Mechanical engineering internshipUPNA · 6 months
Three numbers instead of a promise
01
75 % recycled aluminium in the billet
Recycled aluminium carries around 2.3 kg of CO₂ equivalent per kilo against roughly 16.5 for primary metal. It is by a wide margin the decision that weighs most on the footprint of an aluminium facade, and none of it shows in the finished job.
02
94 % of offcut goes back to the melt
Bar ends, swarf and rejected profile are separated by alloy on site and remelted. The only material that leaves the loop is coated stock that cannot be stripped.
03
A verified EPD for every series
Environmental product declaration to EN 15804, third-party verified and published per series rather than as a company average. That is what a project needs to score under BREEAM or LEED without estimating.
Come and watch an opening fail
An hour at the test rig explains more than any data sheet. We will also show you the series that did not pass first time, and why.