Tooele to be home for Skytrac's $27 million manufacturing plant

Brice Wallace 

A cable transport system producer will build a $27 million manufacturing facility in Tooele.

Leitner-Poma of America Inc. engineers, manufactures, installs and services various types of ropeway systems for the ski industry, amusement parks and urban transport. Its offerings include surface lifts, chairlifts, gondolas, MiniMetro urban transport, trams, inclined elevators and industrial trams.

The 130,000-square-foot facility — the company’s largest in{mprestriction ids="1,3"} the U.S. — is expected to open in 2024 and will serve as headquarters for Skytrac, a subsidiary ropeway manufacturer.

“This new Utah-based facility will allow us to continue to grow our American-made capabilities while expanding our existing headcount in Utah by up to 60 percent,” said Daren Cole, president of Leitner-Poma. “New ropeway systems are rising at a record-setting pace worldwide. The output from this new campus, as well as our work to further onshore our supply chain, positions us to better meet the growing demand throughout the country.”

In October 2021, the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity (Go Utah) board approved a tax credit of up to $2 million for the manufacturing expansion, based on the creation of 118 jobs over a decade. At that time, the company said it was considering several locations in Salt Lake, Davis and Weber counties for the project.

Go Utah documents at the time projected new total wages of $79.4 million over 10 years and new state tax revenue of nearly $13.6 million over that time.

LPOA also said it will expand operations at its factory in Grand Junction, Colorado, which also houses the base of its North American operations. News reports indicate that the company has purchased five acres adjacent to its 100,000-square-foot facility there to expand its manufacturing capacity.

The company’s worldwide network, which is part of High Technology Industries Group, has installed more than 10,000 transportation systems in 61 countries that transport 8 million passengers each hour.

LPOA is a North American subsidiary of Poma SA, a corporation with headquarters in France and a sister company of Leitner AG, a corporation with headquarters in Italy.

The Tooele facility will feature solar panels and a 162-foot-tall wind turbine able to generate 250 kilowatts of electricity, enough to meet 100 percent of its needs. The wind turbine was developed by Leitwind, a Leitner-Poma affiliate.{/mprestriction}