French Prime Minister Inaugurates Poma’s New Industrial Site

French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian, Secretary of State for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, and Secretary of State for People with Disabilities Sophie Cluzel were present at POMA Group’s new industrial site was held in Gilly-sur-Isère, strategically located at the foot of the biggest ski areas in the French Alps.

POMA invested 20 million euros in this new industrial site. The subsidiaries SACMI and COMAG benefit from the 70,000 m² of space dedicated to their specific business needs: manufacturing and assembling mechanically welded assemblies and installing and maintaining ropeways respectively. Other activities on site consist of an assembly unit for the PomaLeitwind wind turbines and a global logistics platform serving all clients in the 90 countries where POMA installations operate.

Over 400 clients and partners visited the new industrial site.

In 1936, Jean Pomagalski installed their first ski lift on the Eclose Trail in l'Alpe d'Huez in France. In 1947, he founded Pomagalski S.A. in Fontaine, France.The first Poma chairlifts were built in 1958 in France and the United States. 1967 brought the first detachable gondolas built by Poma. The corporate headquarters and the production shops are still in Fontaine, but since 1988 most of their management, design engineering, sales and service offices are in Voreppe, France. Poma currently employs approximately 750 people worldwide.

Early Poma chairlifts were installed at Squaw Valley, California for the 1960 Winter Olympics. Poma also supplied lifts for the Olympic Winter Games at Sarajevo, Yugoslavia in 1984, at Albertville, France in 1992, at Lillehammer, Norway in 1994 and has worked on the lifts for the 2014 Games at Sochi, Russia. Poma has installed about 7800 devices for 750 customers worldwide.