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A door mill on the Penang mainland
We are eighty-odd people in Bukit Minyak who cut timber into doors. That is the whole business, and it has been for thirty years.
How it started
Two sheds and a bandsaw
Ambang Kayu began in 1996 supplying door blanks to joinery shops around Seberang Perai. The work was steady and unglamorous: rip, thickness, deliver, repeat.
What changed the direction of the company was watching those blanks come back. A blank we were proud of would return as a warranty complaint because somebody had hung it in a frame that was out of plumb, or machined a lock into a stile that could not carry it. We could either keep arguing about whose fault it was, or build the rest of the process ourselves.
We built it. Kilns went in first, then the press, then the carving bench, and by the mid-2000s we were shipping finished leaves with their own frames. The complaints stopped, which is the only endorsement of a strategy that matters.
What we believe about doors
Three positions we do not move on
Dry timber or no timber
Nothing gets machined straight off the yard, whatever the programme says. If a client cannot wait for the kiln, we would rather lose the order than ship a door that will crack in an air-conditioned house.
The frame is part of the door
We quote leaf and frame together because they fail together. Selling a good leaf into somebody else's frame is how a mill protects its margin and loses its reputation.
Tell the client what it will actually cost
If the opening is covered and a mid-range timber will do, we say so, even when the expensive one is sitting in the yard. We would rather sell you four doors this year and forty over a decade.
Who we work with
Architects, contractors, and people with a photograph
Roughly half our volume goes to architects and interior designers specifying a house or a small development, where we work from drawings and produce shop drawings back. Another quarter goes to contractors fitting out multiple units, who care most about numbering, packing and predictable delivery days.
The rest is homeowners, and those are often the most enjoyable jobs. Somebody walks into the showroom with a phone photograph of a door from a hotel in Ubud, or of the front door on their grandmother's house in Balik Pulau, and we work out how to build it.
We also supply frame sets and knocked-down bundles to distributors in Thailand, Singapore and further afield. Those go out crated, stencil-free and cornered, with a fitting sheet in the bundle.
Timber and responsibility
Where our wood comes from
Everything we buy comes from licensed Peninsular Malaysian mills operating under the national certification scheme, and every intake is logged against its delivery documentation. Chain of custody paperwork accompanies export orders as standard, and we will produce it for a domestic order on request.
We do not buy reclaimed stock of unclear origin, and we turn down species we cannot document. It costs us work occasionally. It has never once cost us sleep.
Practical details
Where to find us
- Registered name
- Ambang Kayu Sdn. Bhd.
- Company number
- 200401021873 (654109-K)
- Showroom & office
- No. 18, Lorong Perindustrian Bukit Minyak 12, Kawasan Perindustrian Bukit Minyak, 14100 Simpang Ampat, Pulau Pinang
- Mill
- Lot 6127, MK 13, Jalan Baru, 14000 Bukit Mertajam, Pulau Pinang
- Opening hours
- Monday to Friday 8.30am - 5.30pm, Saturday 8.30am - 1pm
- [email protected]
Tell us what the opening looks like
Send a photograph, a sketch on the back of an envelope or a full architectural set. You will get a costed shop drawing back, not a brochure.