Story | How are skis actually made?

The size of the factory is immediately apparent as soon as you enter. I've seen a "garage production" of skis from time to time, but never a real ski factory. In addition to Atomic skis, models from the group's sister company Salomon are also produced here, as well as numerous skis commissioned by smaller companies. In total, over 200,000 pairs of alpine and touring skis leave the factory in Altenmarkt every year, plus several thousand pairs of cross-country skis. After a quick coffee in the chic office building, we headed over to the factory halls. I was able to look around everywhere, but photography is not allowed in the entire area. They want to keep a few custom-built machines secret from potential competitors and photos on the internet wouldn't exactly be beneficial...

Raw materials & cutting

I was guided through the factory along the production steps, so I'll start here with the raw materials. These fill an entire hall. Stacked on large shelves, hundreds of ski cores or core blanks await further processing. It's nice to see and feel the difference between light cores, for future ski touring skis for example, and harder versions, such as for racing skis. In both cases, the core consists of pieces of wood glued lengthwise. However, while cores with few layers and light wood are used for touring skis, racing skis not only use many more layers, but also harder and noticeably heavier wood. During processing, the cores are not only cut to length, but also milled to a profile that matches the thickness of the ski. But it's not just cores that are stored here in bulk, various materials for sidewalls are also precisely cut in large quantities and in different colors for the respective ski model (and the respective length). Edges are bent into the required shape and bases are cut or punched out, if necessary with a die-cut.

Sanding & finishing

When the skis come out of the press, they are almost finished, but any excess material still has to be cut off and the ski sanded and waxed. Of course, this is done automatically in the large Atomic factory. In an impressive "grinding line", the skis are ground, waxed, brushed and cleaned fully automatically by large machines. Before the skis can leave the factory, however, they are subjected to a manual or visual quality check, in which they are inspected for deviations in the camber profile and flex, for example, but also for damage and processing errors. Finally, the individual skis are sorted into pairs. From several dozen skis, an employee selects the skis that fit together best in terms of the subtle differences in camber and flex, which are then combined into a pair, stamped with the serial number and finally packed.

What surprised me a little and impressed me the most was the rather large proportion of manual work involved in ski production. Despite the size of the factory and the quantity of skis, automation is only worthwhile for very few production steps. It was already clear to me beforehand that in ski production, the individual parts are not simply thrown into a large machine, from which the finished skis then emerge at the back, but things actually run very similarly in the large ski factory to the garage of some independent manufacturers, just on a completely different scale. This also allows the production of very individual skis, such as those made by Atomic for the large World Cup team, which of course uses individually tailored material.