Saalasti – Turning Biomass into Asset

Saalasti – Turning Biomass into Asset

Excedea has been privileged to work together with one of the most innovative Finnish high-tech companies in the biomass sector: Saalasti. The collaboration combines Saalasti’s decades-long industry knowledge and Excedea’s expertise in international growth creation.

Market Leader in Pulp and Paper Dewatering

Saalasti was born from the vision of the founder Tapio Saalasti in 1945. Since then, the family-run company has built lasting customer relationships and accumulated 40 years of experience in bioenergy products, as well as 73 years of experience in manufacturing heavy machinery.

Today, the company creates tailored engineering solutions, including design and manufacturing of heavy machinery, process control, automatization, consulting and maintenance.

They have delivered over 300 projects worldwide and is continuously expanding their international presence through a global network of offices, including Sweden, Canada, Chile and Spain.

Saalasti’s mission is to turn biomass into an asset. They are already one of the world’s leading manufacturers of heavy-duty bioenergy machinery. With their innovative machinery, they provide the biomass industry with powerful solutions. Importantly, their machinery uses only renewable energy sources to produce electrical and heat energy. Currently, the calorific value of fuel produced with Saalasti machinery equals the output of 10 large nuclear reactors.

Collaboration with Excedea

Excedea has been fortunate enough to collaborate with Saalasti on several projects. As the first step to speed up their international growth, Excedea helped them attain public funding from two support measures from Business Finland: Into and Kiito (now replaced with Tempo). Both applications were successful and have provided a funding facility directed into the launch of a new biomass processing technology. In fact, the first project delivery regarding the new technology is on its way to the customer.

In order to help commercialise their new technology more effectively, Saalasti decided to undertake Excedea’s Growth Auditor process. Growth Auditor started with key team members from the company independently filling a questionnaire regarding their international growth strategy. This was followed by a detailed workshop conducted by Excedea. The result of the workshop was a streamlined understanding of the strategy across the key stakeholders within the company.

The Growth Auditor process was followed by an international growth boost project. This project focused on contacting potential customers for the new technology across Europe and gathering data from more than 10 markets. The outcome was an overview of the target markets as well as a list of interested customers.

As a result of the excellent work done by the Saalasti team and Excedea’s contribution to Saalasti’s international growth, biomass processers across the world will soon start to process biomass more effectively with Saalasti’s new technology.

Wide Product Portfolio

Saalasti’s main products are used to convert various types of biomass into better fuel. The product portfolio covers various crushers, chippers and biomass dewatering presses. With their solid biomass processing solutions, they have had a long-standing position as the global market leader.

Saalasti is a growing company that invests continuously into the development of innovative solutions for green energy production and other solid biomass processes. As the amount of solid biomass processing continues to grow, producers and consumers will need more efficient technologies. This, along with the growing uptake of biomass resources, forms the basis of the company’s growth strategy and created the interest in collaborating with Excedea to speed up international growth.

For more information on how Excedea has contributed to the international growth of innovative companies, have a look at other cases here.

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