December the 14th, 2025 – The Croatian company Arctic, which hails from Rijeka, has built the largest ice park in all of Switzerland.
As Ana Roksandic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the Croatian company Arctic, the largest domestic manufacturer of ice rink systems, has set up an ice park in front of the Bossard Arena in the Swiss city of Zug – it’s the largest ice park in all of Switzerland. The ice rink spans an area of 1,650 square metres, and a 350 square metre long skating track is also available there.
The Croatian company Arctic also presented a brand new type and design of fence in the largest ice park in Switzerland. The 900 thousand euro project was co-financed by the city of Zug and the EVZ Zug hockey club, one of the most successful clubs in all of Swiss hockey. The Zug ice park was preceded by detailed preparations and equipment installation over several days.
“Preparation of the project started back at the end of May this year. Due to its complexity, it was necessary to start all preparations, field surveys and detailed measurements in good time. There were many changes, both in terms of time and dimensions, as there often is in any project. With such large ice rinks, every detail and every measurement are very important, because otherwise an error can occur somewhere and some part of the equipment cannot be installed on site. The installation of the equipment itself took a little more than four days,” Leo Ventin, Operations Manager at Arctic, revealed.
In Zug, they had a fixed ice rink in front of the ice hall until now, and with this project they brought a mobile ice rink for the first time, and for Arctic, this was the team’s first participation in such a large project abroad. It was not enough to just install the equipment independently, but it was also necessary to train the client’s employees who would carry out the installation themselves in the coming years. In addition, the project required extensive documentation, both for personnel and work processes, as well as for equipment permits and certificates.
Getting such a large project in a country where winter sports are extremely popular was not easy. Ventin admits that they have strong competition to contend with on the global market.
“Several European companies, some founded in the 1980s, have a number of installed ice rinks. They have a rich portfolio of cooperation with organisations in professional sports. One of the reasons Arctic getting this job stands out certainly lies in the fact that Croatia has only three ice rinks, while some other countries have significantly more,” said Ventin.
No such reservations managed to stop them on their path to business success, however, and Arctic has been part of the Advent fun in several Croatian cities since back in 2003. This year, they installed a 500-square-metre ice rink in the company’s hometown of Rijeka, more specifically inside the Export drvo industrial hall. This, one of seven Advent locations across Rijeka, called the Export ice box, also contains other Arctic products such as wooden folding houses for Advent and LED RGB fences with special light animations.
The project in Switzerland naturally had many of its own, often highly specific requirements. The ice rink was installed for the first time this year, and plans have already been defined in advance for the next three seasons. Significant upgrades are planned – lengthening the track, increasing the width and generally larger spatial dimensions of the ice rink. This Croatian company will therefore continuously work on developing and improving the project, following the ambitions and growth of the client’s needs going forward.
The company’s portfolio otherwise includes cooling and fencing systems, ice rinks and slides, skates, modular wooden houses, rolly parks and LED RGB integrated solutions that enable various light and visual animations under a real layer of ice. Their work is proof that sports facilities can become a genuine Croatian export asset.
“In more recent years, we’ve begun to enter foreign markets more strongly and the results have quickly become visible. At the FSB 2025 fair in Cologne, which attracts visitors from all over the world, our LED RGB technology installed under real ice attracted great interest. We obviously have also now installed Switzerland’s largest ice rink to date, in a project in which the local hockey club EVZ Zug also invested. We’re currently discussing projects on more distant markets such as over in Canada, New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates. This confirms to us that Croatian companies in this segment have something to offer and that there is real room for export,” said Ventin.
