Casting new horizons Leinovalu

Energy

CASTING NEW HORIZONS

Leinovalu is Finland’s foremost iron and steel foundry and in keeping with its future international ambitions, the company recently changed its name to LeinoCast Oy and extended its product offering. Philip Yorke spoke to the company’s CEO, Liisa Leino, about its drive to expand its export sales and the unique product packages that the company is able to offer today.

Wood

Leinocast was founded in 1898 in Finland and, like many new innovative companies in its day, was focused on providing equipment for the growing agricultural market. Today it is a highly specialised and modern iron and steel foundry that serves a broad industrial customer base. The company has been owned by the same family from the very beginning, and with its strong financial standing enjoys a prominent place in the list of Finland’s most successful, privately owned companies. The secret of the company’s success is based not only upon the excellence of its products but also on its dedicated customer focus and flexibility. Working in close cooperation with its customers Leinocast provides unique solutions that optimise both the functionality and productivity of its clients’ products.

To its many international customers Leinocast is much more than simply a modern iron and steel foundry. It is a dedicated business partner that provides a complete customised service and delivery chain, rather than offering just a standard range of castings. The high quality of the products from Leinocast are well recognised and in addition to precision machining the company has its own engineering shop and finishing facilities for painting and machining. As a result of its broad capabilities, its customers receive the best possible solutions for their assemblies to the exact degree of readiness that they require.

Leinocast’s highly skilled in-house R&D personnel continuously develop innovative products in close cooperation with its customers to meet the diverse and complex challenges facing manufacturing industries today, many of which, involve the latest technologies relating to recycling and sustainability.

Complete turnkey services

From initial concept to product testing, and from design to delivery of ready-to-install components, Leinocast offers a complete turnkey service for its customers. The company’s customer base is diverse, and includes companies that are involved in areas such as forestry, energy, marine and environmental technology.

Environment

Ms Leino said, “We are taking steps to increase our international appeal and image and are in the middle of changing our company structure. Therefore, our foundry business is changed to LeinoCast Oy to support our growing international business. As a company, LeinoCast Oy belongs to the Leino Group Oy. At the same time we are expanding our offer to our customers trading in Europe. LeinoCast will in turn be the most preferred supplier who can offer the total solution for customers, either from delivering castings from our foundries from Salo Finland or through our European foundry network.”

She added, “In addition, we will be having special customer events in June where modern speed and new offerings will be launched. This will all be supported by new logos and home pages on our website. Today we operate four strategic business sectors and these are the forest and wood industry, environmental technology, marine and energy. We don’t have our own branded products as such, however we do have our own unique customised service and delivery chain supported with complete production processes which result in highquality, tailor-made finished products for our customers.

“We are flexible, we listen closely to our customers in order to meet their challenging and changing needs, especially in terms of delivery times. We are dedicated to providing the competences that our customers require and understand the need to get it precisely right every time. Around 90 per cent of our products are exported worldwide, with our biggest markets being in Europe.

“We have the competitive advantage that very few foundries have iron and steel foundries as well as machine and assembly shops all located under one roof and in-house. We are also looking for sound partners with whom we can move forward and build upon the opportunities that we have already created.”

As a highly professional turnkey solutions provider, Leinocast has a strong reputation for delivering particularly complex and demanding castings. This is possible because of the unique combination of facili-

ties available at Leinocast and its engineering expertise and knowhow. The company’s employees are highly skilled and are all experts in their chosen field. Its ability to offer ready-machined iron and steel including design at the top level is what sets it apart from its competitors. This is why Leinocast is not a high volume producer, but rather a reliable, high-quality components partner to its customers.

Advanced solutions

Leinocast provides advanced solutions across its broad range of industrial product applications. In its various forestry related sectors, such as paper making machinery, forestry equipment and cranes, the company has developed products to meet the high standards set by the extreme conditions encountered by this sector. In environmental technology where the company has many years of experience, it supplies components for a number of uses, such as for pumps and valves, mixers, filters, crushers and cranes.

Leinocast has also been recognised as a valued partner in the marine industry for many decades, where safety regulations and production controls in this field are extremely stringent. Many of the components the company manufactures for this sector require classification, which the company itself is able to organise. Leinocast also manufactures precision components for the energy industry for diesel, gas and electric engines, as well as for generators and gas turbines. Once again, the company has a long heritage of supplying high-quality components to this industry. n

For further details of Leinocast’s innovative finished foundry products and services visit: www.leinocast.com

Marine