FACTORY TOUR

Pictured behind is the Toko factory in Altstaetten, Switzerland.  There is also a large administrative building nearby.  Starting on the top manufacturing floor, raw materials for waxes are dumped into large vats which are controlled by a huge control machine.  The machine controls how fast the vats mix as well as the "cooking" temperature and duration.  Raw materials are added during the process.  In a way, the process is similar to cooking where the "recipe" is laid out with ingredients, temperatures, times, and the schedule during which the raw materials get mixed in.  Each vat makes about 500kg of wax.  Above you can see System 3 Red cooking.  Also a raw material that goes into Carbon Basewax Green.

One floor below, you can see the bottom of the vat.  When the mixing and cooking are finished, the wax goes through the pipes to the appropriate station.  There are stations for filling Express Wax canisters (liquid 50ml, 100ml, and 180ml), paraffin-based wax forms (60g, 120g, 40g, 30g, 100g, and 15g), paste wax tubes (75ml), kick wax cans (32g), klister tubes (75ml), and Workshop waxes.

The Toko factory actually consists of 4 floors - raw material storage, "cooking vats" and master control machine, finishing (where the tubes, molds, and canisters get filled up) and painting (where the tubes, molds, and canisters get painted), and the warehouse and laboratory floor.  The laboratory consists of a waxing area where you will find sets of matched skis representing different ski companies and ski disciplines, a testing area where you can see high-tech machines designed to analyze materials, the chemists offices, and the actual laboratory with raw chemicals, beakers, test tubes, white lab coats, and crazy smart scientists who spend their entire days formulating, evaluating, improving, testing, and finishing waxes.