The goal of the present work is testing manufacturing of metal- or transition-metal-doped fibres with the technique of granulated oxides. Optical silica fibres are drawn from preforms assembled from silica tubes filled with granulated oxides of SiO 2 doped with either V 2 O 5 , Cu 2 O, MnO, Bi 2 O 3 or Bi 2 O 3 –Al 2 O 3 . The produced fibres are optically excited with either a N 2 laser (337nm) or an Ar + laser (458–514.5nm). All the investigated ions incorporated in the silica host show a broad fluorescence in the visible range between 500nm and 600nm with a FWHM between 100nm and 150nm. Bi 2 O 3 also shows a broad fluorescence band in the near infrared range at 1425nm with a FWHM of about 235nm. With the admixture of Al 2 O 3 , this fluorescence band can be shifted to 1140nm. The measured spectra are similar to published data even if other host materials than pure silica were used. The experiment shows that fibre manufacturing with granulated oxides leads to similar spectra as MCVD or Sol–Gel technique.