Cableways Impact Assessment Study - Final Report - saferail.nl

IA Study Concerning the Revision of the Cableways Directive
2.3.4 Supply Chains and Inter-sectoral Dependencies
EU
The global cableways industry is dominated by European companies who have supply
chains comprising components from in-house design and manufacturing, components
manufactured by subsidiary firms, and components bought from networks of external
suppliers. In general, the large companies in the industry (Doppelmayr-Garaventa,
Leitner and Poma) have subsidiary companies and are able to conduct more in-house
manufacturing than many smaller players in the industry who are reliant on external
suppliers of components for the manufacture of their installations. However, even
large companies source some components from external suppliers (some of which,
may, however, be part of the same group). By way of generalisation, cableway
manufacturers typically purchase (at least) cabins, cables and drives externally.
The supply chains of Doppelmayr-Garaventa, Poma and Leitner are now discussed,
before exploring the supply chains of the SMEs in the industry.
Doppelmayr-Garaventa
The Doppelmayr-Garaventa Group has production facilities as well as sales and
service locations in over 33 countries, including production plants in Austria,
Switzerland, Italy, France, Canada, China, USA and Russia (Doppelmayr-Garaventa
Press Releases, 2004). Doppelmayr-Garaventa technology is designed and
engineered at the main plants in Wolfurt (Austria) and Goldau (Switzerland). While
the plant at Doppelmayr Wolfurt focuses on the development of circulating ropeway
systems, such as gondolas and chairlifts, Garaventa Goldau develops the technology
for reversible aerial tramways and funicular railways.
The Doppelmayr-Garaventa supply chain includes the use of a subsidiary firm, inhouse
production and external suppliers. The subsidiary CWA Constructions (based
in Olten, Switzerland) supplies Doppelmayr-Garaventa with cabins and carriages for
cableways. CWA, which has been part of the Doppelmayr-Garaventa group since
2001, is the largest manufacturer of cabins for cableways, with an estimated market
share of 65%. It manufactures between 1,500 and 2,300 cabins per year and 80% to
90% of its business comes from the production of cabins. In 2009, CWA had 135
employees (Commission de la Sécurité des Consommateurs, 2009).
Components are also supplied to Doppelmayr-Garaventa by external companies. The
Austrian company Teufelberger is a wire rope manufacturer that has supplied more
than 50% of Doppelmayr projects with wire ropes, and has been supplying the
Doppelmayr section of the company for more than 60 years (Teufelberger, 2008).
Wire rope manufacturers such as Redaelli (Italy) and Fatzer AG (Switzerland) have
also supplied Doppelmayr-Garaventa. Furthermore, all Garaventa hoisting systems
use drums supplied by the German arm of the American company Lebus (Lebus, nd)
and furthermore, Garaventa has been supplied with KAISER (Germany) precision
boring heads for more than 30 years (Kaiser, nd).
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