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.
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. The ActSafe ICX is exactly what it sounds like: a motorised device that climbs the rope, carrying you and your kit with it.
If you have ever ascended a wind turbine tower on mechanical ascenders, you already understand why this exists. It converts a physically punishing part of the job into a routine one — which means the technician arrives at the work still able to do the work well.
No other brand on this site offers anything like it.
Where Skylotec fits
Fall protection. The full programme — 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 programme rather than buying a favourite 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.
When the AllEquipped store opens, Skylotec is where our industrial fall protection programme starts.
What we'd reach for
- MILAN rescue and evacuation device — Controlled descent for evacuating someone who can't self-rescue. The device wind and tower teams build their rescue plan around.
- SIRIUS descender — Ultra-compact industrial descender that's become a serious rope access alternative across Europe and offshore wind.
- SPARK and SPARROW — Work descent control across the range, from compact to full rescue duty.
- SKR guided-type fall arresters — The everyday device that quietly does the job on ladders and lifelines.
- TUNER PRO and NANOLINK lanyards — Energy-absorbing and positioning lanyards built for daily industrial abuse.
- ActSafe ICX power ascender — A motor that climbs the rope for you. For wind turbines, towers and tall structures it turns an exhausting ascent into a routine one — and Skylotec is the only brand on this site that offers it.
- SEKURANT anchor points — Permanent anchors and roof systems. This is fall protection as building infrastructure rather than as something you carry in a bag.
- Rail and cable lifeline systems — Collective protection installed once and used by everyone who follows.