No business like snow business

SHIJIAZHUANG－It has been three years since Italian snow-making company TechnoAlpin settled in Zhangjiakou, the co-host city for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Not long ago, an ice rink enclosure made in Zhangjiakou was exported to Thailand.

Headquartered in Bolzano, Italy, the company is a global leader in snow-making, with a 60 percent market share in the snow-making equipment sector. It will provide equipment and automation systems for Beijing 2022.

"We have benefited enormously from the Olympic Games," says Pierpaolo Salusso, general manager of the company's Zhangjiakou offshoot.

"When I first came to China, Beijing had just successfully applied for the Olympic Games and China's skiing market was still in its infancy. But now China's interest in skiing is very strong," says Salusso, 37, from Turin, who was assigned to China in 2016.

He adds that Zhangjiakou has become the spearhead of China's ice and snow equipment industry, and Chongli is the largest area for high-end skiing in China.

When bidding for the Winter Olympics, China made a solemn commitment to the International Olympic Committee to have 300 million people involved in winter sports. In order to seize the opportunity of the Games, Zhangjiakou launched the construction of its ice and snow sports equipment Industrial Park in 2017.

"The Industrial Park focuses on the development of personal light equipment, such as ski suits, snowboards and ski shoes, as well as heavy equipment, such as snowmakers," says Mei Xiaochun, executive deputy director of Zhangjiakou's high-tech zone.

While the company's global business was affected due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Salusso says, thanks to China's quick control of the virus, after a brief downturn, the business of its Chinese branch is back on track.

Focused on the Chinese market, its Zhangjiakou branch has also developed firefighting robots and dust control and haze removal equipment.

"We are optimistic about China's development prospects. If the coronavirus continues, our company will transfer more business to Zhangjiakou for production in the future," says Salusso.

Salusso's wife and his 2-year-old son also live in China. Every Monday, Salusso takes the high-speed railway from Beijing to Zhangjiakou, returning to Beijing on Friday. He is used to shuttling between the two cities.

It used to take hours to drive from Beijing to Chongli, but with high-speed rail link from Beijing to Zhangjiakou built in 2019, the journey now takes only 50 minutes.

Zhangjiakou has become Salusso's second home in China, and Chongli's major ski resorts are his most familiar places.

"Many of our important customers are in Chongli. To some extent, I watched these ski resorts grow up," he says.

Salusso's hometown of Turin held the 2006 Winter Olympic Games. "Once again I am living in the host city, this time of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. We will serve the 2022 Winter Olympics with first-class technology and products," he says, adding that he hopes, in the years to come, many foreigners will be able to come to China and experience its winter sports scene.