Our tour of the Ponsse Factory and subsequent visit to a harvesting site
After breakfast we said our farewells to the Wilderness hotel and headed west for our visit to see the Ponsse Factory in Vierema which was about a two hour drive away.
For all the snow and ice that was on the roads we hadn’t seen any traffic accidents, it just goes to show what a difference winter tyres and a bit of common sense can make.
As we approached the factory you can’t fail to be impressed with this modern, clean imposing building, just before arriving in the car park we passed the original small workshop where the very first Ponsse forwarder was built in 1969 by the founder Einari Vidgren.
Ponsse is still a family owned company with the Vidgren brothers the largest shareholders, Jarmo Vidgren is the current chairman of the board.
A theme was starting to develop within the manufacturers we were visiting and this was regarding how the war in Ukraine was having a massive impact for forest machine manufacturers. Russia was a huge market for sales and spare parts and since the invasion manufacturers have severed ties and finding new markets is not an easy task.
Manufacturers build machines to order so none we had visited were working at anywhere near maximum capacity due to decreased sales.
Coffee and cakes were waiting for us then we were given a company presentation prior to our factory tour.
Ponsse are different to a lot of other manufacturers as they look upon their workers and distributers as a part of the Ponsse family. You get a sense of this with the Ponsse Ladies Club, they appreciate that partners are strongly involved in the everyday lives of forestry entrepreneurs.
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That’s a remarkable amount of work hours for a single machine, the Norcar 600 owned by Erkki Rinne is taken well care of, it even has the original Diesel engine.
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Kieran Anders is a forestry contractor working in the lake district. His work involves hand cutting and extracting timber using a skidder and tractor-trailer forwarder.
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It is not possible to eliminate chain shot, but there are simple steps that can be taken to reduce the risk.
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Arwel takes great pride in the fact that the mill has no waste whatsoever, “the peelings are used for children’s playgrounds, gardens and for farm animals in barns in the winter and the sawdust has multiple uses in gardens and farms as well.
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Timber hauliers need to encourage young blood in, and also look after the hauliers we have, we need make the sector a safe and positive place to work.
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The club was started in 2004 and is freely open to all Ponsse owner and operator spouses, get togethers are one of the benefits where people can bond and develop friendships while strengthening networks.
Ponsse has grown organically from the small 300m² Ponsse Plc factory that was built for Einari by the local government in 1970 The first machine, a Ponsse PAZ (Perkins Engine, Alison Transmission and ZF shafts), rolled out of the factory 9 months later in 1971 the and was sold to local forestry contractors Erkki and Eero Vainikainen.
Since then the Ponsse factory has grown organically, the last expansion was a new 1.3ha production facility added in 2018 which has increased the floor space to 4ha and they have a workforce in excess of 1,800 people. This is an energy efficient plant with a solar power station on the roof with 640 panels, it generates 192kWp of energy, enough to power 100 houses. Energy saving LED bulbs are used throughout and the Noxite roofing material reduces the need cooling in the summer.
As soon as we started our tour there was a sense of exhilaration along the production line, the atmosphere was full of hustle and bustle. Everything is checked and double checked as it proceeds along the line , it was amazing seeing the section where the robots were checking all the frame welds for quality. It was important we didn’t stray out of the designated walkway and hinder deliveries as
the internal logistics operations were totally reformed in connection with the factory expansion and are now based on pull control. Warehouse automation covers 15,500 storage slots for small items and components, as well as 3,900 pallet positions. Along the assembly line, the parts and components required are picked automatically from the warehouse and transported to each workstation using automated guided vehicles.
It is an amazing experience seeing lumps of steel and sheet metal coming in one end and watching harvesters and forwarders driving out at the other end.
After the Ponsse factory tour was finished we visited the Ponsse Museum within the plant (the original 300m³ factory from 1970) where the very first PAZ has been restored and takes pride of place. It is great to be able to see so much of their interesting history on display.
Once we had all had a good look around it was time for lunch in the Ponsse canteen where a great selection of delicious food was available. I was beginning to get a bit worried as it was a turbo prop aeroplane on our return trip from Kuopio to Helsinki and with all the delicious food, cakes and gallons of beer we were consuming I was hoping it wouldn’t be too heavy to take off.
After lunch we headed to a nearby harvesting site to visit Iisalmen Sahat Oy -IPO Wood in Savota see a Ponsse Buffalo Forwarder and Cobra harvester at work.
This was being clear felled and it was on good firm, hilly site where the brash was being piled up to the side of the extraction route so it could be used for biofuel once seasoned. This was a beautiful stand of spruce -tall, lightly branched, as straight as a die and with hardly any taper, a harvester operators dream job (but they would probably still find something to moan about lol).
I had to laugh as we entered the clear fell site , there was a roaring fire going with coffee bubbling away on top of it and sausages ready for us to BBQ on a stick over the flames. Can you imagine the FISA guidelines back home for managing and cooking on open fires in the forest!
The Cobra was effortless in putting the trees through, again it was a young operator at the helm. The Cobra is double shifted between two operators, this is common practice in Finland.
Ponsse engineering manager Anssi Pitkärantawas with us and on hand to answer every question that was put forward. Again our hosts at the demonstration were outstanding with their hospitality and a big thank you goes to Jutta Säisä who came round with nip of strong Finnish alcohol to keep the cold at bay.
Darkness was starting to descend so we said farewell to more of our new found friends and headed towards our spa hotel which was only about 30 minutes away.
The hotel was amazing with a Sauna, Gym and beautiful bedrooms, I mentioned the quality of the hotels to Kari Palojärvi and he said they were average accommodation for Finland. It makes our Premier and Holiday Inns look like hostel accommodation, prices in Finland were averaging just over £100 per room with breakfast and the use of all the facilities.
We had a lovely relaxed evening with another sumptuous three course dinner.
Spa Hotel Runni
Tomorrow was another early start as we had a three hour bus journey over towards Vaasa where we would visit Alucar and Logset.
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