Insights from the home of weightlifting.
Writing from Sweden. Still feel like I haven’t entirely come to grips with the fact that I am in Europe… anyway. Very happy to be missing 3.5 weeks of winter, can’t complain.
I am currently staying in Halmstad, a small town on the south western Swedish coast, and home of Eleiko, arguably the gold standard in weightlifting and powerlifting barbells and plates. The 2022 New Zealand Commonwealth Games weightlifting athletes (minus David Liti who is already in the UK) are training this week in the Eleiko training facility (‘Eleiko Sports Center’), here in Halmstad within the company headquarters. I get to train here too….hell of a perk for someone at my competitive level.
Yesterday we were given a tour of the warehouse/production center and the notes I took are what I am sharing here (for that reason I make no apologies for anything that turns out to be factually incorrect). I think if you know anything about weightlifting you know Eleiko means quality. Now having been here and seen this, I’m a little bit in awe.
A brief history
Eleiko has been in the production of barbells since the late 1950’s, and originates from Halmstad Sweden. They were first known for small electrical appliances- most notably in this story is the waffle iron.
Within Eleiko, the factory supervisor was also a weightlifter. At this time the quality of barbells was so poor that multiple barbells (up to 10!) were required to get through a single weightlifting competition as they would keep breaking and bending. The factory supervisor Mr. Hellstrom approached the managing director suggesting Eleiko look to make a better barbell. The resulting product features the waffle-pattern knurling as a nod to the company’s history. Eleiko staff celebrate Waffle Day (March 25th) with waffles made in original Eleiko waffle irons. Still good I hear.
Eleiko barbells were used at the weightlifting World Championships for the first time in 1963- which was also the first time a single barbell lasted the entire competition. At this time weightlifting was still using iron plates. It was in 1967 that Eleiko introduced rubber plates, reducing damage and noise as a result of dropping weights. It was also Eleiko that introduced the coloured plate scheme- some dude in Sweden in the 60’s is the reason you know that ‘big blues’ weigh 20kg.
As well as being instrumental to the development of barbell and plate technology, Eleiko is the only company to be certified by the world governing bodies for all of weightlifting, powerlifting, and para-powerlifting. Eleiko now do full gym fitouts and barbells are no longer the core of their business in a commercial sense…but they sold 21,000 in 2021 so you know, still a few.
Halmstad headquaters
We weren’t permitted to take photos, so you will need to take my word for it. The production site we visited was responsible for the production/assembly and testing of three major products; two dumbbells, and the jewel in the crown of their product catalogue; barbells.
The company has approximately 100 staff here in Halmstad, and 200 worldwide. Everything is assembled by hand. If you used an Eleiko dumbbell recently, it was probably Marcus who produced it.
The commitment to quality
Eleiko love to test and are committed to quality lasting products and that’s not even a line. Hanna (head of customer experience or something along those lines) told us that their premium dumbells (Evo) have shown no functional damage after being dropped from a height of 1.5m 500,000 times…. their plates are repeatedly drop tested. I kid you not, they have a machine that hooks the barbell, lifts it up to the decided drop height, drops it, and repeats. There was one operating while we were there….just on repeat, a thump that can be heard throughout the warehouse every 20 seconds or so. They are now confident enough that plates are durable for a ‘lifetime’, and have moved on to actively searching for the limit…they haven’t found it yet. The plates (and we’re talking about 10’s here, the flimsiest option) have been dropped millions of times and are yet to break.
The barbell has been basically the same since first developed- the steel is a custom blend that comes to Eleiko from the same factory in the north of Sweden now as when it was first developed. The next generation of the barbell came out in 2017, with added protection to the steel shaft (for people who drop empty barbells- can confirm that despite this added protection empty barbells are not designed to be dropped and just because you saw the Chinese team doing it doesn’t mean it’s cool for you to), and a dust proof shield to keep the grease in and dust out.
The steel for the shaft of every barbell is the same- it only differs in thickness (for 15 and 20kg). It arrives in Halmstad blank- knurling is then added depending on the type of bar it will ultimately become. The bars (whether training, competition, powerlifting etc) differ only in knurling and bearings.
After knurling is applied all bars apart from the powerlifting competition bar (federation rules) are sent to get chromed, after which bearings and sleeves are applied.
Throughout the entire process every individual component is checked; the quality of the steel, individual serial numbers, that the bar is straight, that the finished product weighs between 15.000 and 15.015kg/20.000 and 20.020kg…. the attention to detail is not at a level I anticipated.
If you’re thinking man she’s started fangirling hard. Yes, yes I have.
