Amer Sports has acquired the assets of Pamporovo Ski, a Bulgarian ski manufacturer that has been working for Atomic in different ways since 1980, for about €5 million. The exact amount will depend on the working capital when the transaction closes before the end of this year. Pamporovo’s current management, led by Krastyo Vangelov, will remain in place along with its staff of 380 employees, and its operations will be fully integrated into the recently restructured winter sports division of the Finnish group.
The move follows a recent decision by the group to scale down considerably the production of skis at Salomon’s French factory and to stop making skis through subcontractors in Romania. The group currently makes about 1.5 million pairs of alpine and cross-country skis annually under its various brands at various locations, but their production will be concentrated in the future at Atomic’s Austrian factory in Altenmarkt and at Pamporovo’s factory in Chepelare.
Pamporovo, a company reviewed in detail in our recent market research report on the Southern Balkans, produced about 210,000 pairs of alpine skis in 2007, including nearly 150,000 pairs of PU-injected skis for Atomic and about 30,000 pairs for Salomon. The rest consisted mainly of skis made under its own brand name, Orion, and for another long-time customer, the Alpen retail chain in Japan, which had bought 90,000 pairs from Pamporovo in 2006. The future of these production lines could not be determined yet.
The Bulgarian company also began to make the first 90,000 pairs of Nordic skis for the Amer group as well as around 50,000 snowboards for Atomic and Salomon, and under its own brand, G-Force. Amer executives indicate that Pamporovo will concentrate in the future on alpine and Nordic skis. It will no longer make snowboards for the group. It will also discontinue a recently installed assembly line for ski boots.
First established in 1973 under Communist rule, Pamporovo became a private company in 1990. It has been controlled since then by its management. All the other employees have held shares in the company after three years of service.
