What is the best way to generate large and complex Excel documents?

Question

PHP

There is a need to create an Excel document in which there will be about 15 thousand commodity items.
All products are grouped with collapsible blocks, for each commodity item its image is inserted and then in the opposite columns the quantity for each day, movement (in/out) and price dynamics are displayed. The resulting document should look something like this:

The data is all in the database. The PHP script selects this data and generates a document. However, now the document is formed in about 15 minutes and eats up an astronomical amount of memory. I could implement all the specified functionality only with the help of the PHPExcel library.
However, I came up with the following thoughts - to create a document on the client machine. I.e:

1. prepare and upload data from the server in one of the following formats:
   
   • as an Excel file
     
   • as XML file
     
   • to an Access database, etc.
     
   
   
2. using VisualBasic, make a script that, when the button is pressed, would collect the document in the required format, that is, it would do:
   
   • Table visual formatting
     
   • Collected and folded groups
     
   • Downloaded images from the site via links and inserted them into the document
     
   • Counted the results
     

How would you do?