Beolab 8
Compact wifi speaker
Customisable
€ 6.000
Established 1925 - culture of craft
Aluminium
Factory 5 hums with precision, even from the outside. 99.97%: that’s the purity of the aluminium used here. Any less, it risks imperfection. Any more, brittleness.
Step 1
Raw materials
Light, strong and pliable, aluminium is nothing short of a wonder metal.
And as if that weren’t enough, it has the natural ability to disperse heat. Quite useful when you’re designing something like an 8,200-watt speaker.
This balance led B&O to experiment with aluminium 70 years ago. Experimentation led to understanding. Understanding led to mastery. And mastery? Just look at the iconic, award-winning designs made here over the decades. That are still made in this building every single day.
Raw aluminium profiles, sheets and extrusions arrive here from a trusted German partner. Looking at a crate of profiles, it’s hard to imagine the journey ahead before this dull-grey form reaches its final shape and shine.
Step 2
Factory 5
Clearly, this is no ordinary factory. Going in, you’re met by a vast, hangar-like space. The air is thick with the coppery tang of heated metal. Full of the droning buzz of machinery. Factory 5 feels alive.
Under this roof, every step of the aluminium’s journey – from clouded metal to timeless design – happens.
Milling, shaping, polishing, anodising and colouring. Then there’s all the bespoke work going on here. And the research being done. The patents filed. The PhDs forged. Robotic arms twist and swivel up and down the hall, their movements orchestrated by machine technicians. A crate of dull-grey cones sits beside a tidy desk, their raw forms waiting to be milled and shaped into Beosound 2s.
Step 3
Forming
You can smell it. Melted aluminium, hissing as it’s poured into forms. And you can feel it: the heat tingles the face.
Over there, a robotic arm hovers above the keel-shaped base of a Beosound Theatre. Its movements are quick and insect-like. Jolting.
It stops dead for a couple of seconds. Bzzz. The incision is made, smooth and precise. Nearby, other robots twist and bend, cut, mill and shave metal with the same uncanny accuracy. Each coded for a singular task, programmed by technicians.
And then there are those tasked with one thing only. Like the X-shaped machine in the corner. Its job? To handle the complex, slanting form of Beolab 90. There’s no way around it: that shape takes this machine.
And it only exists here in Factory 5.
Step 4
Polishing
White cloth wraps a rounded edge. Back and forth, up and down, the expert polishes the keel of a Beosound Theatre. Testing angles and motions to map the perfect pattern. It’s quite a sight. Here, amidst the buzz of machinery, craftspeople sit and polish like this. In a way, it’s emblematic of Factory 5 – a place where touch and technology coexist.
Walking over, this expert then translates the polishing pattern from earlier into code – 2000 lines of it.
Then, a robot replicates the intricate human motion. Back and forth, up and down, the arm moves until the aluminium gleams. They say computers may take our jobs.
Not here. Here, humans will always lead the way.
Not every finish is meant to shine. For a matte look, the aluminium is pearl- blasted. Inside futuristic chambers, countless tiny pearls strike the surface at high speed, leaving a texture that absorbs light elegantly.
Step 5
Anodisation
The anodising facility in Factory 5 is alive with sound and motion. Fifty vats, each holding 3,800 litres of bubbling liquid, form a spine down the tubular space.
A mechanical arm glides along, dipping aluminium pieces through a sequence known only to the technicians on the aptly named “command bridge”.
It works like this. After a thorough rinse, the aluminium is submerged in an electrolytic bath. Mostly water and sulphuric acid – the trick lies in adding electricity to the mix. As power flows through the solution, the aluminium reacts with oxygen ions to form an outer layer of aluminium oxide.
Anodising isn’t just a protective coating. The metal’s surface is transformed, too. It seeps into the material below, locking in colour and shine while making the surface hard, scratch-resistant and corrosion-proof. It’s here aluminium finds its final form.
Next, we’ll meet one of the people who brings it to life.
Meet Britta, our master of aluminium
A physicist by training, Britta joined B&O nine years ago after working with nanoparticles at Aarhus University. Now, she moves through the grid- patterned lanes of Factory 5 with practiced ease.
Nearby, a pearl-blasted side cover sits under the factory lights, awaiting chemical polishing. It’s Britta’s latest breakthrough, a project she’s worked on for some time now. “It’s exciting,” she says, “but I can’t tell much about it yet. Basically, we use a chemical to level out some of the texture of the blasted surface. That restores a bit of sheen to the finish, since the surface now reflects light more evenly.” She looks back at the side cover. “I guess you could say the finish ends up halfway between glossy and matte, which is a unique look for aluminium.”
“You know,” she says, stopping next to a steel cart to pick up a Beoremote One, “that thing with waste? We actually don’t waste much. Since the metal we use is so pure, we collect and repurpose it.” She runs her hand over the remote’s polished surface. “This one’s tricky, though. It’s a single piece of aluminium, so we even had to drill the battery compartment into the back,” she says, turning it, “which is difficult since the thing curves.”
“You know, I’ve been here for nine years. And I still learn something new all the time.”
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