Measuring devices from North Karelia to the world 

Aca Systems manufactures measuring instruments for analyzing soft coating paste, paper porosity and finished rolls. The headquarters are located in the village of Sotkuma, Polvijärvi, with a population of approximately 500. The CEO is based there. Vesa Kukkamon It was good to push yourself into the world.  

There is expertise and experts in the nearby university city of Joensuu. There are subcontractors in the neighborhood and cooperation is also carried out with technology experts in North Karelia.  

“It is easy for customers to come to us, as Joensuu Airport is only 20 minutes away. Customers come here to test the equipment with their own materials or to do test drives,” says Vesa Kukkamo.  

The assembly and testing of the equipment is done in Polvijärvi. The CTO and R&D managers work in the Helsinki metropolitan area. The total number of employees is currently 9. 

International activities 

The company's international nature is reflected in the fact that its website is only in English, Taiwanese and Chinese. 90 percent of ACA Systems' sales come from abroad.  

“Our focus has been international from the beginning. China is an important market because there is a lot of paper industry there. We translated our website into Chinese to help local retailers.”  

Europe has traditionally been the strongest market area, with Asia and America being fairly evenly matched.  

ACA Systems solutions have been exported to over 50 countries. Channel partners operating in over 20 countries sell ACA products.  

Deep knowledge of processes drives progress 

The company was founded in the 80s Heikki Mustalahti. He was unable to get investment money for a measuring device he felt was important while working in the paper industry at the time. So he manufactured the device himself and founded ACA Systems. 

Vesa Kukkamo finds three decisive milestones in the company's nearly 40-year history that have driven the company forward. The first takes us to 1991, when the company launched the ACAV ultrahigh shear viscometer for the paper and board coating industry. 

“Coating speeds increased enormously in the early 1990s. The viscometer we developed was able to measure the flow properties of the paste under process conditions, which allowed us to immediately see what kind of pigments or binders could be used as speeds increased.”  

A modern, smaller and easier-to-use capillary viscometer launched in 2019 also enables daily quality control of both the coating paste and its components. This is especially important for new plastic-replacing biomaterials in the packaging industry, whose flow properties at high speeds can be challenging.  

The next step was the development of an online air permeability analyzer for measuring process stability and product quality in the papermaking process. With porosity measurement, measurements can be made directly from the moving paper web. The first delivery was in the early 2000s. 

“When the customer is able to reduce porosity variation, energy and chemical consumption decreases and strengths improve. With real-time measurement, the process can now be controlled and stabilized very quickly and significant cost savings can be achieved as the amount of scrap, energy and chemicals used is reduced.”  

A hand-held device for measuring the hardness profile of a roll, launched in 2015, can detect potential problems in the converting process in good time, even before the rolls are sent on their way.  

This year, alongside the handheld device, an automatic roll hardness profile measurement was introduced, which is suitable for quality control of raw rolls entering converting plants, for example. 

"Our competitive advantage is that by working closely with the customer, we have a deep understanding of the processes and are therefore able to develop just the right kind of measuring devices. We are now aiming for strong growth and are looking for new markets, for example in the battery industry," says Vesa Kukkamo.