Elected officials joined Leitner-Poma of America yesterday in Tooele, Utah to turn the first dirt for what will become the company’s largest North American facility. The 130,000 square foot campus will complement an existing 100,000 square foot factory in Grand Junction, Colorado opened in 2007. Leitner-Poma subsidiary Skytrac Lifts will move from leased space near the Salt Lake City airport to Tooele. The state-of-the-art facility will allow the firms, which are owned by HTI Group of Italy, to increase production and expand headcount up to 120 employees, with further growth possible in additional phases of the project. In addition to Skytrac and Leitner-Poma production, the building will also house a parts warehouse and offices for HTI snowmaking brand DemacLenko and HTI grooming brand Prinoth. All told HTI plans to invest $27 million in Tooele.
When the new facility opens in May 2024, LPOA and Skytrac will manufacture 85 to 90 percent of lift equipment for the North American market in the United States. “Today, we are thrilled to mark a new era of our company here in Tooele,” said Daren Cole, president of LPOA. “We are really invested in the State of Utah and the resort industry. We are focused on Made in America here in Utah and the U.S.” He noted Leitner-Poma’s primary competitor imports much of its equipment from Europe. Leitner-Poma is Italian-owned but offers a largely North American-designed and manufactured product line.
The Tooele facility will support not only the ski industry but also future projects for amusement parks and urban transit. “We want to welcome Leitner-Poma to the fastest growing county in the fastest growing state in the nation,” said Utah Lieutenant Governor Diedre Henderson. “Here in the heart of Utah’s industrial landscape our partnership with Leitner-Poma will pave the way for groundbreaking new developments in the transportation industry with its cutting edge new manufacturing facility.”
Leitner-Poma plans to install solar panels and a 250 kilowatt wind turbine from fellow HTI brand Leitwind to provide 100 percent of the factory’s energy needs.
Lift Blog 
I know Detachable quad and six passenger chairs are made in Austria, but does anybody else know what is built in Europe for LPOA?
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Detachable and Poma (not SkyTrac) fixed grips. Bubble/gondola door operating systems. Direct drive motors. Gearboxes. Brake pump units. Service brakes on conventional-drive lifts. Probably LeitDrive units.
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Skytrac parts from overseas would be, primary gear boxes(Flender), electrical components (siemens, abb,etc) ,sometimes sheaves (Leitner Poma), and some APU engines (Kubota or JCB). The SLC location builds the remainder in house or uses local suppliers.
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Darren Cole (CEO LPOA) was stating that 80-90% of what’s sold in North-America is produced locally…
From what I understand Poma’s SACMI/SIGMA (mechanical welding & gondola cabins) products are exported from Europe, if Detachable quad/6p chairs are also exported, isn’t that 80-90% figure BS ?
Very interesting to compare with Doppelmayr as well :
LPOA’s current factory is 100k sqm, they’re growing it by +20k sqm (mainly for storage) and they’re also annoucing a new 130k sqm factory –> 250k sqm (ok, they do include other HTI’s brands in these factories, but still)
Doppelmayr only has a 85k sqm factory in Salt Lake City and a factory in Quebec which doesn’t seem to be more than 50k sqm –> how do they manage to deliver such impressive projects volume in North America ? Do you think they massively export from Europe ?
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As I understand it, Ste-Jerome produces vertical steel for the North American market, and probably some other parts (just not sure what). The Salt Lake facility is the former CTEC plant, acquired in the merger; it builds fixed-grip parts. I’m not sure what percentage of Doppelmayr products are exported from Wolfurt but I’d have to guess detachable grips, gearboxes, terminal machinery, and probably sheaves and sheave assemblies. Doppelmayr/Garaventa carriers come from Europe while the CTEC-style ones are built in Salt Lake.
As far as LPOA goes, many of the subsystems aren’t built here (as I mentioned above) but Grand Junction currently builds the entire structure of the lift, up to and including all detachable systems. They’re built to work with the imported grips but are a purely North American model. When you look at it that way, a fairly high proportion of LPOA lifts are built domestically.
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