MANUFACTURE
MANUFACTURE AND HI-TECH LAB
In 2006, Alpina moved to a purpose built, hi-tech manufacturing plant in Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva. Covering 3200 square meters, this building is now a second home to the dedicated craftsmen and women who produce and assemble our movements and watches. It is also the base from which all the other manual and automated processes that are necessary to get your watch to you are performed.
Plan-les-Ouates is also where our unique Manufacture watches are conceived, engineered, designed and built, totally in-house. Before any watch can truly be called an Alpina sports watch, however, it is put through a rigorous series of tests to measure their precision, aesthetic appearance and conformity with Alpina’s standards. Our stringent tests and trials take place throughout every stage of the watch’s production. Before being dispatched to our customers, each watch is subjected to tests that mirror real life and extreme sports conditions.
PROGRESS AND INDEPENDENCE
The history of watch making in Switzerland can be traced back hundreds of years, to when dairy farmers used their downtime in the winter months to assemble precision watches. While the legacy of these initial horological pioneers continues, in that we still manufacture the finest Swiss movements in-house, progress has opened many new technological opportunities. Nowadays, computers, laser-guided machines, nano technology and state-of-the-art microscopes are all part of the armoury of the truly modern watchmaker. Continuous investments in hi-tech equipment and the development of new and innovative processes are at the core of Alpina’s avant-garde professional sports watch manufacturing operations.
At Alpina, we fully embrace the progress made to date, and today we are leaders in technological development. We are determined to assure continued improvement in the performance, functionality and quality of our watches.our independence.
OBSESSION WITH QUALITY
What sets an Alpina watch apart from other watches is its unrivalled quality achieved through our unwavering dedication to excellence.
We are committed to manufacturing timepieces that are microscopically perfect before they reach you. No short cuts are taken. The efforts put forth in production are supported by meticulous quality control processes that ensure a faultless outcome every time a watch leaves our factory.
All our watchmakers have had extensive training in their chosen area of expertise, and we employ only those artisans who have a true passion for watch making. Each Alpina watch is therefore a labour of love for all concerned in its creation.
ASSEMBLED BY HAND
When you buy an Alpina watch, whether it is an automatic or one of our most sophisticated calibres, such as the Tourbillon, you know that you are buying a watch assembled by hand.
Each watch is put together, one at a time, carefully and in a dust-free, climate-controlled area where white-coated lab technicians using tools that would still be recognizable to our founder, Herr Gottlieb Hauser, painstakingly assemble their masterpieces.
A STEP BY STEP QUALITY CONTROL
At each step, every Alpina watch is subjected to strict quality controls, and once it is ready, the timepiece is still subjected to a final obstacle. A specific series of digitally controlled machines put the watch through a concluding sequence of trials,
designed to be more rigorous and demanding than almost anything the watch might come up against in your real life and extreme sports activities.
THESE TESTS INCLUDE:
BEFORE ASSEMBLY
All mechanical movements are tested in a fast tumbler,exposing them to strong rotation forces
The watch is put inside a custom-made fast rotation devicethat simulates the gravitational forces created by the movement of the wrist
The watch is taken out of the rotator deviceand undergoes a visual inspection (movement rotor)
The movement’s accuracy and amplitude are tested in five different positions,using ultramodern Witschi equipment
The water-resistance is tested usinghigh-tech “Deltarox” or “Hormec” machines
All watch functions are manually controlledand a final aesthetic conformity inspection is made
All mechanical watches undergo a power reserve test
THIS IS WHAT YOUR ALPINA WATCH GOES THROUGH BEFORE YOU BECOME AN “ALPINIST” BY WEARING IT.
TRUST IT. RELY ON IT.
