Julia develops tomorrow’s doors at Daloc in Töreboda

Julia Hellberg completed her degree project that Daloc in Töreboda and never left. As one of the company’s development engineers, she gets to use her technical know-how and creativity to produce tomorrow’s secure doors.

They’ve been building doors at Daloc in Töreboda since 1942. Back then the focus was on building doors that could resist fire, but much has happened since. Today, there are many more qualities that characterize secure doors from Daloc. Julia Hellberg conducts R&D  at the company. She tells us there’s a great deal more in a door than most people would ever see or think about.

“We think ’it’s a door, how hard can that be?’ And certain doors can indeed be very simple, but not the ones we make. When we develop doors there are many things we can adjust and modify to meet a customer’s needs and make a door more secure based on different parameters.” 

Daloc is Scandinavia’s leading manufacturer of secure doors. And it all starts with Julia and her colleagues in the R&D department. Developing a door begins with technical drawings where they use computers to sketch the door and adjust its characteristics. Once they have a design proposal they build a prototype in Daloc’s in-house prototype workshop. And then it’s time for tests.

“When testing how e.g. a door will handle a fire we call on external companies to conduct the tests. But it can happen that one of our workshop employees will get to act as a burglar to test how well a door will stop an attempted burglary,” explains Julia.

Major employer

Daloc is one of the biggest employers in Töreboda municipality. In recent years the company has grown and in 2020 it decided to invest SEK 250 million on its facilities in Töreboda. Today, almost 400 people work in these facilities and many of them commute to work.

“Töreboda’s location on the western mainline railroad makes commuting easy. It only takes 15 minutes to get here from Skövde,” says Julia.

Julia herself gets to work quickly as she lives in a house in Töreboda together with her significant other. When she’s not working, she loves to be in the outdoors mushroom picking or hiking, cycling along the Göta Canal or out on the water in her boat.

“I appreciate how close everything is in Skaraborg – nature is never far away here!”

Degree project led to her job

Julia grew up in neighboring Mariestad municipality and studied technology at high school. When she was studying machine technology in Karlstad, she contacted Daloc prior to completing her degree project.

“I knew I wanted to get back to Skaraborg and was looking for a company to work with here. I've never left since! I’ve been working here since 2016 and I love it!”

Eleven people work in the R&D department and five more in the prototype workshop. The assignments are varied, and because her employer cares about its personnel, Julia is really happy at work. 

“In my experience, if the company needs new skills it first offers its existing personnel the chance to do in-service training and advance within the company, which is something I appreciate.”