CNC Machining Supplier for Spain and Portugal

One page for two countries, because the drawings read the same

Spain and Portugal are separate markets with separate languages and separate industrial bases, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But from a machine shop's side of the drawing, they arrive almost identically, and pretending there is a deep technical difference would be inventing one to fill a page.

Both national standards bodies adopt the European standard rather than writing their own: UNE-EN in Spain, NP EN in Portugal. So the material on a drawing from Gipuzkoa is 1.4301, the same number a drawing from Bergamo carries, and the same steel a drawing from Baden-Württemberg calls 1.4301. No translation step. The general tolerance block is usually UNE-EN ISO 2768-m, and on older sheets it will be UNE 22768-m, which is the same document under its previous number.

What differs is the drawing culture. Iberian drawings tend to carry fewer toleranced dimensions than German ones and rely more on the general block, which means the general block matters more. If a sheet says 2768-m and three dimensions actually need 2768-f, the shop that assumes the block is being generous will ship parts that do not fit. We read the block, then ask about the three dimensions.

There is a full cross-reference table on our European buyers page, including the EN 10088 short designations.

The auxiliary industry model is the whole market

Northern Spain runs on what the local industry calls la industria auxiliar — a dense layer of tier-two and tier-three shops that hold the OEM relationship and subcontract the machining. Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia alone have hundreds of them, feeding machine tool builders, wind turbine suppliers and the railway industry around Beasain. Portugal has the same structure in a different shape: the mould clusters around Marinha Grande and Aveiro, and a machining base around Porto and Braga that supports them.

This changes what a good supplier looks like. A tier-two shop reselling to an OEM is not buying a part, they are buying insurance against a schedule slip, and they are usually quoting a fixed price to their customer before they have a firm price from us. What they need from a machine shop is a date they can hold and a price that does not move after the PO. Both are worth more to them than the last five percent on the piece price.

It also means the customer relationship question comes up early. We machine to your drawing, you own your end customer, and we do not contact them. Drawings, part numbers and fixtures are not shown to anyone else, and if your end customer asks who machines the part, that answer is yours to give.

Wind, rail and mould work ask for different things

The Basque wind supply chain sends bearing housings, flanges and gearbox components where the tolerance is generous relative to the size and the real requirement is flatness over a large face. A 400 mm flange with a 0.05 mm flatness callout is not a tight part, but it will not sit flat if it is clamped on three points and machined in one pass, and the fix is a fixture that supports the whole face rather than a better machine.

Rail work is the opposite: smaller parts, tight positional tolerances, and a documentation requirement that is heavier than the machining. EN 10204 3.1 certificates, full traceability by heat number, and a dimensional report that survives an audit five years later.

Mould and die work is the third pattern and the one we are most careful about. Cavity inserts, sliders, ejector plates — much of it is wire EDM and deep-pocket milling on hardened steel, and while we do the milling, a shop that specialises in moulds will usually beat us on both price and lead time for the cavity itself. We say that when the enquiry is a mould, because taking it and delivering late helps nobody.

Payment: why we ask for 30% up front

Spanish buyers commonly work on pagaré or confirming, sixty or ninety days from delivery, and Portuguese buyers on sixty days. Those terms are normal in the domestic market and they are paid on time. We still do not offer them on a first order, and it is worth explaining rather than just refusing.

A first order from a company we have never shipped to has no history behind it. On EUR 8,000 of turned parts we have bought the bar stock, paid the machinists and paid the surface treatment subcontractor before the goods leave. Thirty percent with the order and seventy before dispatch is what makes that possible without either side carrying credit risk it cannot assess. After a year of shipments the conversation changes, and we will have that conversation.

A prototype by express courier costs roughly EUR 25–40 under a kilo, billed at cost with the waybill attached. The sample charge is credited against the production order, so the sample is effectively free if the project goes ahead.

Ports and airports that actually get used

Sea freight into Valencia is the usual route for the east coast and for Madrid, Barcelona for Catalonia, Bilbao for the Basque Country and the north, and Algeciras for anything routed through the Mediterranean. Portugal goes through Leixões for Porto and the north, or Sines for the south. Transit runs 32 to 38 days port to port.

Air freight reaches Madrid or Barcelona in 4 to 6 days door to door, and Porto or Lisbon in 5 to 7. If your site is in Gipuzkoa, Bilbao by sea is often faster end to end than Madrid by air once customs is counted, which surprises people.

DDP is available. Spanish import VAT at 21% and Portuguese VAT at 23% appear as a separate line on our invoice so they can be recovered; a single all-in number reads better and is useless at the VAT return. We also quote FOB and CIF, and we send the commercial invoice, packing list and HS codes as one set before dispatch.

Questions that come up before the first order

Can we work in Spanish or Portuguese?

Quotes go out in English with a Spanish summary covering price, lead time, incoterm and the open technical points, and a Portuguese one if you ask. Discussion runs in English. There is no full Spanish or Portuguese version of this site — each has a single landing page, which is a fair reflection of where our enquiry volume sits.

What is the minimum order?

One piece. For a subcontract shop validating a new supplier, ordering one part of three different part numbers is a reasonable way to start.

Do you hold IATF 16949?

No. We hold ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015 and we do not claim anything else. Automotive tier work that only needs parts documented to the drawing is fine; a supplier scorecard that requires IATF is not something we can pass.

How many parts can you take in a month?

The plant runs 220 machines — 100 machining centres with 30 five-axis, 50 CNC lathes, 70 Tsugami sliding-head lathes — at roughly 5 million pieces a month, most of it small turned parts.

Can you hold a delivery date?

We quote dates we can hold rather than the date that wins the order. For a subcontract shop quoting a fixed price to an OEM, that difference is the whole relationship.

Send a drawing, get a price and a date you can quote on

PDF, STEP or DXF. Quotes back within 12 working hours, English with a Spanish summary.

Request a quotation

Shenzhen Changhexin Precision Hardware Co., Ltd. (CHX Metal) · Shajing Street, Bao'an District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China · ISO 9001:2015 (NOA198428) · ISO 14001:2015 (NOA2100184) · NDA and IP protection · Contact