Recap PCI-Alpencup: Team Austria wins the Challenge Cup again

As in previous years, it was an exciting competition between the tilers and in the end a very close race. After the task had been evaluated by the expert jury, Team Austria was just "a step ahead" and was able to secure victory again at the PCI-Alpencup 2023. 22-year-old Sara Sinhuber from Gföhl and Florian Gruber (20) from Irdning won the PCI-Alpencup Challenge for the Austrian team. Runners-up are Manuel Karg and Lukas Schmittlutz (Team Germany). Third place went to Karim Doledec and Goulven Lecoq from France. All 18 participants of the PCI-Alpencup 2023 are invited to Sika's '10ths International Tiler Competition - Global Finals' in Guangzhou, China, in Q4/ 2023.

PCI introduced the PCI-Alpencup in 2021 as a new format as part of its promotion of young professionals and organized it in close cooperation with the European Union National Tile Associations (EUF). The format has since established itself and continues to grow from time to time. Nine countries took part in the third international performance competition: Germany, Austria, Switzerland and South Tyrol as well as Denmark, France, Norway, Sweden and the Czech Republic. A total of eighteen young craftspeople entered the race on June 29 and showed their skills on two days of the competition. The award ceremony on the evening of June 29 concluded the event. The venue was in Switzerland for the first time in 2023, the event took place in the Dagmersellen vocational training center in central Switzerland near Lucerne.

As with the previous PCI-Alpencup events, each team of two had to complete a task based on the level of the World Skills Championships (WorldSkills) or European Championships (EuroSkills) within a specified time frame. As with the first PCI-Alpencup in 2021, the task set by the jury was very challenging this year. The participants had to tile a wall with rectangular tiles in a diagonal herringbone pattern, with the accuracy of the diagonal cuts being particularly important. A bench in the shower area had to be covered with mosaic. It was necessary to prepare a level laying substrate so that the mosaic could be fixed neatly. Furthermore, large-format wall and floor tiles with an exact joint pattern and a flat surface had to be produced. When tiling the washbasin, absolute precision was required when cutting the sections. The gradient in the shower area was created by installing a screed.

The aim of the PCI-Alpencup is to support young craftspeople as part of the promotion of young professionals, to give them an opportunity of taking part in international cooperation, to exchange views and to measure their performance against each other.

Here you can find the result summary.

The winning team Austria with Sara Sinhuber and Florian Gruber: