Hard at work on the slopes

Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug’s PistenBully all-terrain vehicles and BeachTech machines can be found hard at work on the world’s ski slopes and beaches. Felicity Landon reports.

PistenBully will have a wide range of its all-terrain vehicles on show at Interalpin 2011 in May. The market leader in the design and manufacture of vehicles for ski slope and trail preparation, in the past few years Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug has expanded significantly by buying and integrating two competitors. Further acquisitions are more than likely as the group continues to look for growth.

The PistenBully made its debut more than 40 years ago, produced in 1969 by Karl Kässbohrer Fahrzeugwerke Ulm, at that time Germany’s largest producer of motor coaches and truck trailers. The 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo were a breakthrough event for PistenBully and within 10 years of the first model being produced, more than 2000 PistenBully vehicles had been sold in 35 countries.

Headquartered in Laupheim since 2002, today’s company produces top model ski slope and cross-country track grooming vehicles, as well as its BeachTech vehicles for beach cleaning and grooming, and other vehicles for environmental and naturerelated applications.

At Interalpin, Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug will be showing off technical innovations such as the PistenBully EQ.2, the PistenBully 100, which now has a more powerful engine, and the PistenBully 600 W Polar, now even stronger and safer, thanks to a new 4.5-tonne

winch which makes working on steep slopes easier. Meanwhile, the PistenBully 400 Park, the Formatic 350 and the PistenBully Paana reinforce the fact that Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug can offer the right vehicle for any application and any budget, says marketing manager Michael Hemscheidt.

Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug is also the only vehicle manufacturer to offer a navigation system for snow groomers. SNOWsat is installed in the PistenBully during production, and is also easy to retrofit in older vehicles.

Two brands

“We provide our customers worldwide with slope grooming vehicles, the PistenBully, for almost any job you have in mind when preparing slopes in skiing areas,” says Mr Hemscheidt. “Our second brand, BeachTech, is a range of beach cleaning equipment which has proved to be a reliable product not only in cleaning ‘normal’ dirty beaches but also in cleaning oil-polluted beaches – for example, the Mexican Gulf coast last year.”

While the company is not launching any ‘brand new’ products, it continues to work on future technologies such as dieselhybrid and diesel-biogas drives, he says.

wproduced at Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug’s production site and head office site in Laupheim, near Ulm in southern Germany. The group also has sales and service subsidiaries in Austria, Switzerland and Italy, and daughter companies in France, Finland and the USA. There are also small production lines in Finland and the USA. “We have made steady investments in our locations and of course we invest a lot in design and development of our products,” says Mr Hemscheidt. Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug’s customers are basically in the tourism industry. Some 95 per cent of production is for export; the PistenBully range is sold in 68 countries worldwide and the BeachTech range in more than 70 countries.

“There are no major geographical markets which we do not serve,” says Mr Hemscheidt. “And, as there are basically no new skiing areas, we have to grow through acquisitions and, of course, always being the first in ideas and developments.”

SNOWsat

The launch of SNOWsat – offering ‘GPS for precise slope grooming’ – was a key achievement for Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug. This is an integrated system for guiding and real time monitoring of snow groomers and snowmo-

Kässbohrer

Our complete relationship with Kässbohrer is based on logistics and mutual trust – or just the other way round. Honolds responsibility is about steering out the complete procurement by JIT process for the production of those beautiful “high end” vehicles as well as the distribution of important spare parts European wide by a combination of overnight express, national premium solution and a high individual solution for all international transports. All together with one target – being on time at all destinations - making people happy.

Luhn & Pulvermacher

Luhn & Pulvermacher – Dittmann & Neuhaus GmbH (LP-DN) with the experience of many decades has best competence in the manufacturing of high quality, high strength torsion bars. The variety of bars starts at a shaft diameter of a few millimetres up to 90 mm. LP-DN’s torsion bars are not only used in Kässbohrer’s PistenBully vehicles; you can also find them all over the world in tracked and wheeled military vehicles like battle tanks or troop carriers and, assembled with levers at the ends, as anti-roll bars in railway trains being it high-speed trains, regional trains or subways. Besides torsion and anti-roll bars as well as heavy coil springs for defence, railway and other industries LP-DN produces stabilinks, stabilizer bars, parabolic leaf springs and air links for trucks, light commercial vehicles and buses.

biles. The system uses GPS data to produce a cartographical image of the slopes, including all cable car poles and snow guns, as well as any potential danger spots. The position of the vehicles is conveyed to headquarters in real time. SNOWsat can also be set up to measure the depth of snow.

The integrated solution supports the driver’s work, optimises quality control of the work performed and improves safety for people during work, says Mr Hemscheidt. “SNOWsat offers improved productivity: through time savings thanks to easy positioning and independence from weather and visibility conditions; drive assistance using different colours for already prepared areas; optimisation of work flows; coordination of the whole fleet’s work; and measurement of snow depth,” he says. “It also offers more security and safety: through an alarm in the base station and in the vehicle if the connection is lost or the vehicle goes into a danger zone; the display of obstacles, danger zones, other vehicles’ positions and winch vehicle cables; real time positioning of the specific vehicle to an accuracy of one metre; and traceability of operating conditions, for example, in the event of legal problems.”

Other advantages include prompt communication, with data conveyed during work via an interactive menu, and efficient management, through comprehensive analysis of the data and work performed and a simplification of work using computer-supported planning.

The PistenBully EQ.1 set the bar high for environmentally friendly, resource-preserving, cost-effective driving; extensive tests on the PistenBully 600 with hybrid drive showed that fuel consumption was reduced by up to 25 per cent, with knock-on emissions and cost reductions. The diesel-electric drive also means that attachments previously powered hydraulically can now be powered electrically. The drive also turns the PistenBully into a mini ‘power station’, providing enough power to operate external tools for repair and other work. The EQ.1 has been redeveloped over the past few months and its successor, the EQ.2, is being unveiled this year.

Proving its worth at the other end of the weather scale is the PistenBully 300 GreenTech, a year-round machine that can work on steep slopes and extremely sensitive terrain alike. GreenTech vehicles are ideal for moving silage in biogas plants, for forestry work on remote terrain, for mowing and mulching work on ecologically sensitive ground, or for work on wetlands. The flexible PistenBully vehicle concept allows diverse attachments, such as dung spreaders, plant hole drillers, trench cutters and many more.

With the variety and versatility of its range, Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug is looking for further growth: as Mr Hemscheidt puts it, “We are looking forward to the same stable development we achieved through the past few years.” n