Handover in Austria

PistenBully veteran
For Peter Soukal, the world has been seeing red for over 40 years. He began his Kässbohrer career in 1978 as a young automotive electrician with SETRA buses, and from 1980 he spent many years as a mechanic on behalf of PistenBully, held numerous training courses around the world, and finally became service manager. Since 2006 he has been very successfully managing the business of the Austrian Kässbohrer subsidiary. For 43 years, he has contributed to the success of PistenBully and the company and has been able to significantly increase the sales of Kässbohrer Austria.

Close to the customer
What proves to be difficult these days is Christian Paar's work credo: Close to the customer. His first station at Kässbohrer Austria was in customer service in 2005. In the following years, he got to know the company, the customers and the market comprehensively in all areas. He was also responsible for trainings for many years. "During the training courses, you learn particularly intensively what our customers need and want," Christian looks back on that time with pleasure. He then developed in the direction of sales and has been responsible for sales and services SNOWsat Austria since 2013. After 16 years of successful work at Kässbohrer Austria, his dedication, experience, pragmatic and customer-oriented manner make him the ideal successor to Peter Soukal.  As of April 2021, he will be the new Managing Director of Kässbohrer Austria GmbH.

His goal is "to continue to lead the company as successfully as before and to maintain cohesion within the company, especially in these difficult times." His very personal focus is to intensively pursue the possibilities of digitalization and innovative technologies and to generate an advantage for customers and Kässbohrer from this.

The 36-year-old Paar is married and the father of a son. In addition to motoring and archery, he enjoys relaxing while skiing. Christian has big plans for the future and is very much looking forward to his new tasks: "I see great potential in combining the areas of PistenBully and SNOWsat sales. And I also already have ideas for the PRO ACADEMY to make it even better and more future-oriented". Christian's level-headed nature, ambition and determination will stand him in good stead for driving these changes forward, always in the interests of customers and employees.

"I will miss the ropeway family"
Peter Soukal will miss the ropeway family in the future. The 63-year-old particularly appreciates that the handshake quality still applies here. His thanks to the customers stand above all for the trust and openness that has always been shown to him. "Above all, Austrian customers have taught me to have great optimism and faith in the future and in my own industry."

He also thinks back fondly on his assembly, testing and training periods that took him around the globe. On some assignments, he was directly uncomfortable when he saw the simple conditions under which fitters lived in other countries, compared with European prosperity.

Of course, he can think of many anecdotes from all those years. He emerged as a real hero from an assignment in Argentina: a PistenBully 200 DW, which was actually very reliable, was not operational for two years. Peter was sent to fix it. On the spot, he found that the problem was not with the vehicle itself but only with the non-stop switch. He had the respect of his Argentine colleagues as he proudly drove the vehicle out of the garage.

Those who know Peter know that he has always taken such situations with humor. Despite all the work, stress and numerous kilometers on Austrian highways, he looks back wistfully.

At the same time, he is looking forward to his retirement years, which he has already planned well with trips with his wife and grandchildren, various repairs to his classic cars and his decades of gentlemen's rounds. Only the "To Do list" of his wife, gives him a headache. But as we all know Peter Soukal, he will also master this successfully!

Peter wishes his successor "always to keep calm, to approach the tasks in a factual and professional way and, above all, luck and success in steering the company through these difficult times."

Jens Rottmair, CEO Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug AG: "The entire Kässbohrer team and I personally wish Peter a healthy and carefree retirement. We will greatly miss his always friendly and Austrian amiable manner. For Peter, the customer was always in the foreground. I wish Christian Paar a successful hand in his new task. The good thing is that we know a good one is going - a good one is coming," Jens Rottmair summarizes.