Crystalline PVD alumina coatings offer a high potential for application as protective coating material on cutting tools. In the first part of this work, the reactive sputtering of Al target in an HPPMS discharge is investigated for various pulse lengths in an industrial scale unit. In a second step, alumina coatings are deposited at various bias voltages. It can be observed that the pulse length has a strong influence on the amount of maximum allowable oxygen flow in the reactive process. Longer pulse lengths allow a higher oxygen flow in the coating process compared to short pulses. The characterization of deposited coatings shows that at higher bias values a dense fine grained crystalline morphology is formed, while the mechanical properties peak for a certain bias value.