All in all, there are three factors behind the success of Atlas® ropes: the material used, the correct combination of different types of filament, and the right arrangement of the various strands in the rope. Now that the brand has been on the market for around 50 years, some of the ingredients in this recipe for success are no longer a trade secret. “For example, the design of the ropes — how they are put together — is no longer commercially protected,” Mader explains. Today, many competitors use a similar or identical type of construction. “You could also say our method has become the established industry standard,” he adds. The trick is to use a sophisticated combination of mono- and multifilaments — i.e. synthetic single strands and composite strands comprising a number of filaments. But more of that later.

Still commercially protected, on the other hand, is the material used for the mono- and multifilaments. This is the same substance for all the components of an Atlas® rope: polyamide, known by the brand name “Perlon®”. Using the same material has the advantage that all the different parts of the rope react in the same way to external factors such as heat or cold. The polyamide is extruded as a continuous monofilament at the company plant in Dormagen. Although the process itself is fairly elaborate, the underlying principle is very simple.