The Finnish lighting solution provider and LED tube manufacturer Valtavalo Ltd. has increased its turnover throughout its entire life cycle, i.e. 10 financial years in a row. What makes Valtavalo’s story interesting is the fact that the company, which was originally an import company, is today living heavily on exports and its products have the blue-white Key Flag Symbol denoting their Finnish origin.
Valtavalo started its export business even before the establishment of its own factory in Kajaani, Finland. However, since the opening of the fully automated factory in 2012, exports have gradually taken a larger role in Valtavalo’s annual turnover. The company established a branch office in Sweden in 2017 and now sales in Sweden are almost at the same level as Finland. During the ongoing financial year, ending in May, all exports have accounted for 54% — 7 percent higher than a year earlier. Although most exports are to Sweden and northern Europe, there are countries that are more exotic to us, such as Peru.
Currently the Swedish branch office employs five people and mainly focuses on sales, whereas the twenty people in Finland work in sales, administration, production and logistics.
We’ve had a good Finland-Sweden match ‘Finnkampen’ going on between our sales teams and it is nice to inspire each other to achieve better results,” laughs Martin Persson, who is responsible for Swedish operations.
In recent years the company has gone through a rigorous programme of launching new production lines and products and, last but not least, an organizational restructuring to improve profitability.
We have made tough choices and after a few lean years, we can finally see the results of the big investments we have made in our own products and production lines in the form of improved profitability, even though the depreciation of investments as well as financial expenses have put a heavy strain on the result”, says Tuukka Prykäri, who started as CEO in the beginning of the year.
“In the current fiscal year, we are doing well and growing steadily, so the future still looks bright,” says Prykäri.
