CMC
Rooted in rescue since 1978 — the systems professional teams build their capability around.
Skylotec
Neuwied, Germany, since 1947 — the industrial scale player, and the only brand here that also builds the building's safety system.
Every other brand on this site makes gear you carry. Skylotec makes that too — harnesses, descenders, lanyards, the MILAN rescue device — but it also makes the rail system bolted to the roof, the anchor points cast into the structure, and the powered ascender that carries you up a wind turbine. Around 950 people across twelve locations, still headquartered in the German town where it started in 1947. When the question is a whole jobsite rather than a whole kit, this is the one.
- 1947Founded by Eduard Kaufmann in Neuwied, on the Rhine
- 950People across twelve locations, nearly 300 still at Neuwied
What we'd reach for
- MILAN rescue and evacuation deviceControlled descent for evacuating someone who can't self-rescue. The device wind and tower teams build their rescue plan around.
- SIRIUS descenderUltra-compact industrial descender that's become a serious rope access alternative across Europe and offshore wind.
- SPARK and SPARROWWork descent control across the range, from compact to full rescue duty.
- SKR guided-type fall arrestersThe everyday device that quietly does the job on ladders and lifelines.
- TUNER PRO and NANOLINK lanyardsEnergy-absorbing and positioning lanyards built for daily industrial abuse.
- ActSafe ACX power ascenderThe workhorse of the powered range. 220 kg working load, 24 m/min, and 550 m of climbing on one battery — or run it off AC when there's a socket. 150 m remote. This is the one that makes a tower day a different day.
- ActSafe ICX power ascenderThe compact one: 12.5 kg, 185 kg load, 230 m per battery. Light enough to carry to the anchor rather than stage at it, which is the whole argument for it over the ACX.
- ActSafe RCX rescue ascender250 kg and IP67 — sealed against the weather rather than merely resistant to it. The rescue variant, remote-operable, built to sit in a kit until the day it matters.
- ActSafe PMX power ascenderGasoline. 250 kg, 750 m on a tank, and no charging infrastructure required. For sites where there is no power and no prospect of any.
- SEKURANT anchor pointsPermanent anchors and roof systems. This is fall protection as building infrastructure rather than as something you carry in a bag.
- Rail and cable lifeline systemsCollective protection installed once and used by everyone who follows.
Skylotec started in 1947 as a sole proprietorship, founded by Eduard Kaufmann in Neuwied, on the Rhine north of Koblenz. It’s still headquartered there, and it’s still family-connected — the Rinklake name runs through the company’s history and into the foundation it established in 2022.
What’s changed is the size. Skylotec now runs roughly 950 people across twelve locations worldwide, with nearly 300 at Neuwied. Alongside the specialist workshops on the rest of this site — DMM’s Welsh forge, Rock Exotica’s Utah machine shop — Skylotec is a genuinely different kind of company.
That difference is the point.
Fall protection as infrastructure, not just equipment
Ask most rope brands about fall protection and you get a harness, a lanyard and an anchor sling. Ask Skylotec and you can also get the rail system bolted along the roof, the cable lifeline running the length of the walkway, and the SEKURANT anchor points built into the structure itself — a business they strengthened by acquiring Secupohl’s fall protection systems in 2022.
This is collective protection: installed once, then used by everyone who comes after. It’s how large industrial sites actually solve working at height, and it’s a category nobody else on this site serves at all.
And then there’s the motor
In January 2020 Skylotec acquired ActSafe, the Swedish maker of powered ascenders. ActSafe is no longer an independent company — it is Skylotec’s powered access line, and this is the page for it.
A power ascender is exactly what it sounds like: a motorized device that climbs the rope, carrying you and your kit with it. If you have ever gone up a wind turbine on mechanical ascenders, you already know why it exists. It converts the punishing part of the job into a routine one, which means the technician arrives at the work still able to do the work well.
There are four, and the differences between them are the whole decision:
ACX — 220 kg, 24 m/min, 550 m on a battery, or mains AC if there’s a socket. 150 m remote. The default for passenger and load transport.
ICX — 185 kg, 24 m/min, 230 m, 12.5 kg. Half the range of the ACX and noticeably lighter, which matters when the ascender has to get to the anchor on someone’s back.
RCX — 250 kg, IP67. The rescue unit: sealed rather than splash-proof, and specified to sit in a kit for a year and work on the day it’s opened.
PMX — 250 kg, 17 m/min, 750 m on a tank of gasoline. Slower, but it doesn’t care whether the site has power.
All four run 11 mm rope and nothing else. That is worth knowing before you buy: the device dictates the rope, not the other way round.
The Husqvarna deal, and what it tells you
In a move nobody would have predicted from an industrial PPE company, Skylotec put the ICX on Husqvarna’s BLi-X 36V battery platform and sells it to arborists as the “Skylotec Actsafe ICX powered by Husqvarna.” 185 kg, 78 ft/min, 754 ft per BLi200 charge.
The logic is very good. A tree crew already owns Husqvarna batteries for the saws. Putting the ascender on the same platform removes the objection — no new charger, no new spares, one battery ecosystem on the truck.
It also puts Skylotec into tree care, which is a market Petzl and Teufelberger have largely had to themselves.
The competition, and we’d rather say it here than let you find out later: Ronin builds a lighter American alternative that runs on 10–13 mm rope. Neither brand wins outright — see that page for the honest comparison.
Where Skylotec fits
Fall protection. The full program — harnesses, energy-absorbing lanyards, guided fall arresters, retractable blocks, anchors, lifelines. Built for OSHA/ANSI and EN compliance regimes rather than for climbers.
Wind energy. Turbines are Skylotec’s home ground: rescue planning, powered ascent, confined nacelle work, and evacuation from height with no ground support nearby.
Rescue and evacuation. The MILAN and its kits are how a lot of European industrial teams plan to get an incapacitated worker down.
Confined space. Retrieval systems, winches and rescue kits for entry work.
Rope access. Harnesses, descenders, rope clamps and work seats — including the SIRIUS, which has been steadily winning rope access technicians over.
Why we rate them
They cover the whole problem. Personal PPE, rescue plan, permanent installation and powered access under one brand. For a safety manager building a compliance program rather than buying a favorite carabiner, that completeness is the entire value.
They own the categories nobody else does. Powered ascent and installed systems aren’t glamorous, but for wind, telecom and heavy industry they’re the difference between a viable job and an impossible one.
Seventy-five years and still in Neuwied. Scale without losing the base — a lot of companies that grow to twelve locations lose the plot somewhere along the way.
Where Skylotec sits across the three disciplines: rope rescue, rope access, fall protection — three jobs, one pile of gear.
When the question is a whole site rather than a whole kit, Skylotec is what we reach for.
More in Work at height
All brands →The nearest neighbors on the shelf — same categories first, same department after that.
Petzl
Fifty years of French vertical-safety engineering, and the spine of most rope access kits — including ours.
CAMP Safety
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Edelrid
Founded 1863 in the Allgäu — the company that invented the rope everyone else's gear runs on.