A new indoor snow centre that has opened this summer at a mall in Taiwan makes snow off-site so there’s no need for a refrigerated building.

The new Snowtown indoor snow park at the Mitsui Outlet Park at Taichung Port in Taipei, Taiwan, uses a Snowfactory snow-making machine from TechnoAlpin.

Snowfactories are perhaps best known for snowmaking at conventional ski areas,. Particularly those in locations where natural snowfall cannot be relied upon, as they make snow inside the unit from where it can be sprayed via hoses on to slopes over some distance from the SnowFactory.

At Snowtown, Taiwan, the same technology is used to pump snow (or flake ice to be more accurate) from outside the building in to the snowpark which has a capacity of 300 people.

The snow is produced at very low temperatures and transported into the hall with a core temperature of -5°C so it lasts through the day.

“It means that the operating temperature inside is not sub-zero like most indoor snow centres around the world but plus 16-18 degrees Celsius,” said Katrin Überbacher of TechnoAlpin, who added, “The advantage of this concept is high comfort for visitors (no winter apparel needed, pleasant temperatures compared to the environment) and less cooling power.”

The same concept is used in all other Snow Towns and also at Trans Snow World in Bekasi (Jakarta).

The indoor snow centre is believed to be the Third in Taiwan, with another centre opening seven years ago in Hsinchu city.

The first indoor snow centre in the country opened over two decades ago, initially as a basic facility to prove to Taiwanese investors in a planned major indoor snow complex dubbed the Zanadu project that snow could be made in the tropics by Acer Snowmec, a leading indoor snow centre company at the time, and that Taiwanese would use the facility.

White Shark Snow World in Kaohsiung operated from 1997 – 1998 with a 100 metre toboggan run and ski slope built on the first floor of an existing water park.

Open for over a year it was discovered that the water park had never had planning consent and the Government, in a clean up operation,  had it demolished.