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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's state capitol will forever be connected to the Winter Olympics, and in more ways than just the athletic events.
There is also a business connection, and one Utah company is playing a huge role in Sochi. Doppelmayr USA is a company that specializes in high-speed, high-capacity lifts. The company is famous for building ski lifts throughout Utah, and helped build several lifts in Sochi for the Winter Olympics.
“Our parent company was founded in 1892,” said Mark Bee, president of Doppelmayr USA. “(We) started out building equipment for farming: ploughs and cider presses, things like that."
Today, Doppelmayr USA and its subsidiaries around the world build high-speed, high-capacity lifts. The company is the No. 1 lift builder in North America in terms of market share. If a person skis, chances are he or she has been on one of the Doppelmayr lifts.
"We have lots of ski lifts in Utah,” Bee said. “Essentially every ski lift built in the last two decades was built by our company in Utah."
Doppelmayr USA's work includes lifts at Utah resorts like Snowbird, Deer Valley and The Canyons.
Doppelmayr USA has been in Salt Lake since 1981 and merged with CTEC, another lift-maker in 2002. Workers at this facility are constantly busy making and stockpiling components for future lift projects.
Their work in Sochi, Russia, includes the 3S-passenger cabin, the latest gondola design that transport 4,500 people per hour up the hill.
Foreseeing potential business opportunities, Doppelmayr USA set up a subsidiary office in Russia 20 years ago in a move that has helped benefit the company tremendously.
"When Sochi was accepted for the Olympics we were already in the market and were the market leader there,” Bee said. "We have a total of 40 installations that we were hired to build in Sochi out of a total of 45 installations.”
And this isn't the only Olympic venue with lifts from Doppelmayr. The company put in a $30 million system for the Vancouver Games, and future games are already in the works.
"Yeah, we've sold several installations in South Korea and I believe there are several more that will be built for the Olympics," Bee said.
