History

In 1952 Gunnar Frånberg produced his first ski lift in the basement of an apartment block in the Hornsberg district on Frösön Island, in Sweden. He called his company Nordmaskin and supplied a few individual ski lifts a year.

To begin with Frånberg produced his first lifts under licence from Müller in Switzerland. The business soon moved out to Odenskog, now Östersund’s industrial zone, at that time a wooded area with some fields and an old barn which housed the lift production. The lifts produced here were mainly T-bar lifts and some chairlifts. In the mid-60’s Alimak lifts were bought in and were produced in Östersund.  Nordmaskin, which had been renamed Liftbyggarna during the 60’s, was taken over by RP Invest in the 70’s. Liftbyggarna held the agency for the French lift brand, Poma, during a period from the mid-70’s to the mid-80’s.  At the end of the 70’s, Harry Sjöström took over as MD and subsequently acquired the ownership of Liftbyggarna. It was Harry who began to produce Liftbyggarna lifts to his own designs, but using technology from Alimak and others. Since 2009 Kristian Sjöström is the CEO and will take Liftbyggarna into the future.