Composite Decking for Spain — Specified for Sunlight Hours, Not for Winter

The Decking Range

Capped co-extrusion and classic uncapped, hollow and solid. Six of the sections Spanish distributors order most — the full schedule runs to well over a hundred.

Co-extrusion 23 × 138

Capped, hollow, round chamber

The main capped section. This is the profile our slip test was run on.

View product →

Co-extrusion 23 × 148

Capped, hollow, premium

Wider capped board, four-sided cap. The usual choice for terraces in full sun.

View product →

Co-extrusion solid 20 × 140

Capped, solid core

Solid throughout. Specified for commercial traffic and exposed edges — the usual answer on a hotel terrace.

View product →

3D embossed, round chamber

Deep-grain surface

Heavier embossing than a standard woodgrain, in the capped construction.

View product →

3D embossed, square chamber

Deep-grain surface

Same surface, square-cell core. Lower cost per square metre than the round-chamber section.

View product →

Classic 140 × 25

Uncapped, square chamber

First-generation grade, shown in Walnut. Cost-led work with routine cleaning.

View product →

The One Layer That Decides How a Spanish Terrace Ages

Most supplier pages treat capped and uncapped as a price tier. In this market it is a performance decision, and it is worth understanding before you read a single price.

The cap is the layer that takes the sun

60% wood powder, 30% HDPE, 10% additives. That is the whole recipe and we would rather publish the additive share than print two numbers that do not add up to a hundred. On the capped range a co-extruded shield wraps a WPC core, and the shield is the wearing layer — it is what carries the UV resistance and the fade behaviour. In a market with the sunlight hours Spain has, that sentence is the whole argument for the capped grade. The material can be recycled and reused at end of life.

So specify the grade against the exposure, not against the budget line

A terrace under a toldo or a pérgola, a north-facing patio in Galicia and a fully exposed roof terrace in Seville are three different exposures, and they do not all need the same grade. Shade changes the problem more than any product choice does. Tell us which of the three you are quoting and we will tell you honestly where the classic range is enough and where the capped range earns its difference — that conversation costs nothing and it is cheaper than finding out in year four.

Sections, with the dimensions on them

Six of the capped sections with board width and thickness: ZSGJ138H23A and ZSGJ138H23C at 138 × 23 mm, ZSGJ138H25 at 138 × 25, ZSGJ140S23 at 140 × 23, ZSGJ140S25 at 140 × 25 and ZSGJ145S30 at 145 × 30. The capped generation runs round chambers rather than the square cells of the classic range — they clear water instead of holding it. Quote the model number back to us and there is no ambiguity about what you are buying.

Surface textures

Four surfaces in the capped range: H1 straight grain, and H2, H3 and H5 wood grain. The classic range runs its own set of finishes under a different code, so quote the texture code together with the range. Texture and colour are specified separately — say both when you enquire.

Colours — Three Ranges, and Why Colour Is a Comfort Decision Here

In a cooler market colour is decoration. In Spain it changes whether a surface can be crossed barefoot in August, so settle it before the quotation rather than after.

The full colour card

Capped co-extrusion: Teak, Antique, Redwood, IPE, Light-grey, Walnut.
Classic uncapped: Teak, Redwood, Walnut, Coffee, Chocolate, Ebony.
3D embossing: Teak, Red Wood, Walnut, Chocolate, Light Grey, Dark Grey.

Start at the lighter end and work back

A dark board in full Spanish sun gets genuinely hot underfoot. Every composite behaves this way, and so does natural stone and so does porcelain — colour is the lever, and the shade structure over the terrace is the other one. Antique and Light-grey in the capped range, or Light Grey in the 3D embossed range, run noticeably cooler than Walnut, Redwood or Ebony. On a terrace that will be crossed barefoot, start light and let the client talk you darker with their eyes open.

Where the greys live

Grey is available in the capped co-extrusion range (Antique, Light-grey) and in the 3D embossing range (Light Grey, Dark Grey). So a grey brief is a capped or 3D embossed job and should be priced on that basis from the first conversation. And the same colour name across two ranges is not the same colour: Walnut in the capped range is not Walnut in the classic.

Two things worth settling before you order

A swatch is an indication, not a match. Screens and print both shift colour, and a board photographed under a grey sky reads differently from the same board under a Mediterranean one. Ask for physical samples in the two or three you have shortlisted — free, you cover the courier, credited in full against your first order. And order the whole job in one batch: pigment goes into the extrusion, so two runs of the same colour will not be identical and a board replaced in year four will not match. Keep spares from the same shipment. On a hotel programme phased over two seasons, say so at the quotation stage so the whole quantity is run together.

Where Spanish Distributors Put It

Two project types that carry most of the volume in this market. These are photographs of our own installations, not stock images and not renderings.

Residential terraces and patios

The volume market — a patio, a roof terrace, the strip between the house and the pool. The details that matter are the edge trim where the deck meets render or tile, and keeping the board gaps clear so a downpour drains instead of ponding.

Hotel and commercial terraces

Large areas, phased refurbishment and real foot traffic. Solid sections get specified for the trafficked runs and the exposed edges, and batch consistency across the whole area matters more here than on any private job.

Installation and Accessories

From our own installation guide. Put these figures on the drawing before the frame goes down — most of the failures we see in Europe come from a frame set out to timber habits.

The gaps, and the double joist

5–7 mm between the sides of adjacent boards. About 5 mm between a capped board and a wall. 3–5 mm at butt joints where two board ends meet. Butt joints sit on double joists — each board end gets its own joist, never a shared one, and this is the detail most often missed. Boards fix with stainless or plastic clips; the joist itself can be aluminium, stainless steel or WPC. Set a gutter at the base so water drains rather than ponds — the section further down explains why that detail is sized by the worst afternoon of the year here, not by the annual rainfall figure.

Accessories, with sizes

Stainless steel start clip, plastic clip, expansion screw, L-shaped corner trim 50 × 50 × 3000 mm, WPC joist 40 × 30 × 3000 mm, aluminium joist 40 × 25 × 2900 mm. Note the aluminium joist is 2900 mm, not 3000 — an easy hundred millimetres to lose when you take off quantities. Anywhere on the coast, specify A4 / 316 stainless for the clips and fixings rather than A2.

Ask About a Specific Profile

Send the section, the volume and the province

What Owning the Line Gives You

Capacity you can book against

Roughly 2,000 tonnes a month, about 100 containers. What matters to a distributor is not the headline but that a repeat order does not queue behind somebody else's. Send the volume and the date; we answer with a slot, not a hope. On a hotel refurbishment with a hard opening date, that is the number the whole conversation turns on.

Dies are ours, so sections are ours

We own the moulds and cut them in-house. That is why the schedule runs past a hundred sections rather than a catalogue page — and why we can talk seriously about a market-specific profile.

A test report with every shipment

Goods are checked before despatch and the report travels with them. Routine, not negotiated — and it is what makes a warranty claim a paperwork exercise later instead of an argument.

Certification: What We Hold, and the Exact Scope

Spanish specifiers verify, so here is the whole picture including the exact scope — a certificate covering three profiles covers those three profiles. Ask and we send the document itself.

Get the Documents Themselves

Nothing above is a claim you have to take on trust. Tell us which documents your project needs and we will send the PDFs — certificate, Declaration of Performance with the reaction-to-fire class, the laboratory reports, and the warranty schedule.

Request the certificates and test reports

What We Do for a Distributor

A first order can be well under a container

Minimum order is 70 m². Well under a full container, and it exists so a new distributor can test a colour, a profile and our paperwork before committing to a 40HQ. Most suppliers at this end of the market quote 1 × FCL and lose the first conversation.

Samples are free

You pay the courier and we credit it in full against your first order. Ask for a sawn sample: the cut end shows whether the cap runs all the way round the section or stops at the sides. Ask for more than one colour while you are at it — and in this market, ask for a light one and a dark one and leave them both in the sun for an afternoon before you decide.

A real number within 24 hours

Send the specification and the volume, get a per-unit price rather than a range. We need: profile, colour, quantity in m², discharge port, whether the terrace is shaded or exposed, and the date it has to be on the ground.

Private label, market-specific sections, testing on your profile

All three are conversations. We own the tooling, we already run sections cut for particular export markets, and where a project needs a test our documents do not cover we will put your profile through the laboratory — fee up front, credited against the order. Every result we send you names the profile it was measured on.

Spain: Route, Transit and Terms

Loading is Nansha or Yantian, both in Guangdong, both within trucking distance of the plant.

What the Spanish Climate Does to a Deck

Specific to Spain, and deliberately different from our German, Dutch, Polish and French pages. A Dutch deck is tested by damp and a Polish one by the swing between February and July. A Spanish deck is tested by the sun, and then by the two afternoons a year when the sky empties all at once.

Sunlight hours are the headline number, and the cap is what answers them

Spain gets more hours of sun than any other market on our European pages, and UV exposure is cumulative rather than dramatic — nothing happens in year one. On the capped range the co-extruded shield is the layer carrying that load, which is why we treat capped-versus-classic as a specification question here and as a budget question almost nowhere else. Ask us which grade we would put on the exposure you are quoting, and ask for the warranty schedule at the same time so the fade cover is in front of you rather than behind a link.

Surface temperature: colour first, then shade

A dark board in full sun gets genuinely hot underfoot, and no composite is exempt — nor is stone, nor porcelain. Two levers exist and both are yours: the colour, and whether there is a toldo, a pérgola or a canopy over the area. A light board under shade and a dark board in the open are a different experience of the same product. Specify from the lighter end where people will be barefoot, and where the client insists on a dark board, put the shade structure in the same drawing.

The gota fría: drainage is sized by the worst afternoon, not the annual total

Along the Mediterranean coast a large share of the year's rain can arrive in a handful of hours. A terrace that copes fine with 300 mm spread across a year can still flood in one September afternoon. Design the fall, the board gaps and the perimeter for the peak rather than the average: keep the 5–7 mm gaps clear, set the gutter detail the installation guide calls for, and never close the perimeter so tightly that the deck becomes a tray. Composite does not take up water the way timber does — what causes trouble is water that had nowhere to go.

The coast: salt attacks the fixings, not the boards

Most of the volume in this market is within reach of the sea, and in an onshore wind salt carries further inland than people expect. The composite handles it. Screws, clips, joist hangers and post bases do not — and that is exactly where nobody looks until the deck has to come up to reach them. Specify A4 / 316 stainless rather than A2 and put the fixing grade in the quotation rather than leaving it to whoever is on site.

Thermal movement still applies, even without a hard winter

Spain has no Polish February, so the annual swing is narrower — but a dark board sitting in August sun reaches a surface temperature well above the air temperature, and that is what the board responds to. Leave the end gap. About 5 mm to a wall, 3–5 mm at butt joints, and where boards are laid on a cool morning in a hot month, work to the upper end of the range.

Water, and How to Read a Slip Number Before You Quote

This comes up on nearly every Spanish enquiry, so it gets its own section rather than a line in a table. The important thing is not our number — it is knowing which number your project is being asked for.

What our result actually is

R10 under AS 4586-2013 Appendix D, ramp method at 15 degrees, Intertek report 230625005SHF-001, measured on profile ZSGJ138H23A. That is the shod wet method — the number that describes a surface walked in shoes. It belongs to that profile and to that method, and we will send the report itself so your own technician reads the scope on its face instead of taking our word for it.

Barefoot wet areas are a different question with a different scale

Wet areas crossed barefoot are assessed by a separate method against its own classification, and a figure from one method does not convert into the other. So the first thing to establish is which one your project, your client's insurer or your technician is actually asking for — then ask us for the report that matches it. Anyone who hands you a single slip figure and lets you assume it covers every situation has skipped that step. Bring us the requirement and we will answer it with the document, not with an adjective.

And ask for the warranty schedule early

Any project involving treated water is worth reading the warranty schedule for before you quote, not after — the exclusions are in it in plain terms. Ask and we send it with the certificates. It is a two-minute read and it settles what would otherwise be a year-three conversation.

Three Things That Go Wrong When Europeans Import WPC

Not sales copy — these are the three that cost distributors money.

The frame is set out for timber

A joiner spaces joists at whatever timber decking takes, because that is the habit. Composite has a maximum support spacing and it is tighter than timber. Get the figure for your profile in writing and put it on the drawing before the frame goes down. Wrong, and the deck does not collapse — it flexes underfoot permanently, and the fix is lifting the boards.

The end gap gets left out

The most expensive of the three, because a buckled deck is a full relay with no partial fix. The figures are in the installation section above — and the double joist under a butt joint is the half of it people forget.

Batch colour is not matched later

Pigment goes into the extrusion, so two runs of the same colour will not be identical. Order the whole job in one batch and keep spares from it. A board replaced in year four will not match — ours or anybody else's. On a phased hotel programme this is the single most common source of an argument, and the fix is free: say at the quotation stage that the phases belong to one job.

Warranty, and How a Claim Works

Stepped, not flat

Capped co-extrusion carries 15 years, classic uncapped 10. Both step down by year rather than paying full value throughout: 100% of the value of the affected goods in years 1–3, then 80, 70, 50 and 40% through years 4 to 7, then reducing in bands to 10% in the final years. It covers peeling, cracking and overall uneven fading.

It starts at the destination port

Cover runs from the date the goods arrive and are signed for at the port — not our factory gate, and not the day your customer installs them. That usually works in the distributor's favour.

Certificates are per batch

The schedule that applies is the one on that batch's certificate, which is why the test report shipping with the goods matters. Keep it with the commercial paperwork. If a supplier quotes you a flat 25 years, ask for the schedule — the answer tells you more than the number.

Talk to Us About Spain

The full enquiry, if you would rather send everything at once. Include the province and whether the terrace is shaded — both change what we recommend. You will hear back within 24 hours with a real per-unit price.

Distributor and project enquiry

Spain: Common Questions