Sunkid delivers customized gallery solution for Japanese ski resort

High snow quality, varied slopes, first-class food and a unique children's ski park: with these highlights, the Gransnow Okuibuki ski resort in Shiga Prefecture (western Japan) is welcoming more and more visitors every year.

To further increase guest satisfaction, last year the resort invested in three escalators called "SNOW Warp", which make it easier to walk from the parking lot to the main lift station (height difference: 22 m) and back. These were to be completely covered for extra comfort.

As no local supplier could be found for a suitable gallery solution to cover two parallel escalators, the resort approached the Japanese Sunkid sales partner Nippon Cable. After all, five ski conveyor belts had already been successfully realized with them in the past.

Thanks to the development and production expertise of the Sunkid subsidiary Bruckschlögl GmbH, it was possible to solve the special challenges of this project exactly according to customer requirements. Project manager Michael Neuböck: "The most challenging aspect was that the escalators and connecting routes, which our duplex gallery had to follow, were three-dimensional. We'd never done this with our gallery before - but we managed the construction with special transitions made of thin sheet metal.

The effort involved in the precise production of the sheet metal transitions was considerable: we built the arrangement one-to-one in our welding shop. We also produced a special pallet for each transition for transportation from Austria to Japan."

The result, after installation of the gallery by Nippon Cable, is impressive: not only as a sun-drenched gallery and "protective screen" for staircases and guests in bad weather, but also as a visual highlight at night! LED light strips, whose light color can be individually controlled, were integrated into the aluminum gallery arches for this purpose.