"I left Lapland starving and ended up in Varkaus after a few twists and turns," Ilkka Satta grins. Previously, Satta worked in LVL (laminated veneer lumber) production for twenty years at Finnforest, which later changed its name to Metsä Wood. When Stora Enso replaced its paper machine with an LVL production line about ten years ago, Satta was called upon to run the new line.
“I have been working with veneer for thirty years now,” says the man. During these years, veneer production capacity in Europe has grown from 50,000 cubic meters to over a million.
Satta, who is in his fifties, has never gotten bored, quite the opposite.
“Ilkka’s dream is to launch one more new production line,” notes Satu Natunen, Communications Manager at the Varkaus factory, who is participating in the discussion.
Ilkka Satta laughs and continues:
"Well, I've already planned it out in my head!"
LVL is an incomparable veneer wood
Ilkka Satta gets excited when asked to talk about LVL veneer lumber, its production and use. He calls the product the most advanced engineered wood product and continues:
"The only limit to its use is your imagination. You can create anything from veneer wood, from railway crossing decks to anything. The elements do not need mold protection or other treatments."
Veneered wood panels are used in the construction industry in the production of building elements and components. They are used to build apartment buildings, schools, daycare centers, offices and hotels. New uses are constantly emerging. LVL elements can be found in the structures of the Wisdome Stockholm facility, which has won numerous awards and is located next to the Stockholm Museum of Technology. Secondly, for example, Ilkka Satta is building Stora Enso's Katajanokka headquarters in Helsinki, the largest new solid wood building in Finland. The load-bearing structures of the office, which is built mostly with the company's own products, are LVL beams made from turned veneers from the Varkaus factory. According to Satta, LVL, which is dimensionally stable, strong and rigid, is unparalleled for this purpose.
Morning wake-up professional
Ilkka Satta is a morning person. The clock rings before five. He drives to the factory at half past five. First thing in the morning, he goes over the previous day's progress with the shift supervisors.
The first meetings start at 7:30. Before that, Ilkka Satta says he will take care of his own office work. Although there is a lot of administrative work and meetings, Satta works primarily on production development, taking care of test runs and production tuning.
Satta works closely with production planning and sales:
“An architect may come up with a product idea for a specific object or project.”
When asked about a new product, Satta starts calculating production, its costs and the impact of different solutions on production efficiency. Satta thinks about his own future and the factory's and says that he works for the company with finances in the back of his mind.
"Especially when the price of wood is high, the raw material must be used carefully. My job is to assess how we produce goods efficiently and profitably," describes Satta and continues:
“First you have to know how to order the right kind of log. That's where it starts.”
When softwood logs come through the mill gate, they are completely used. The logs are used as construction material, and the sawmill produces chips, bark and sawdust as by-products. All of them are used further as pulp, pellets or energy. Nothing is wasted.
Ilkka Satta collaborates extensively at the factory.
“Production operators, senior staff, subcontractors, maintenance staff, sales people,” Satta lists the large group of people he works with.
Five facts about Stora Enso's Varkaus mill
1. Industrial activity in Varkaus began with the establishment of a steelworks in 1815. A few decades later, in the 1870s, the heyday of the forest industry and mechanical industry began.
2. Stora Enso's bioproduct integrated plant is located in the middle of the city of Varkaus, known as the Detroit of Finland. The integrated plant includes a wood products unit and a packaging board mill. The wood products unit's LVL mill produces veneer sheets, the sawmill produces traditional sawn and planed goods, and the pellet plant produces pellets. The packaging board mill consists of a wood processing plant, a pulp mill, a recycled fiber plant, and paper machine 3, which produces corrugated board face layers.
3. The production and maintenance of the Varkaus mills employs approximately 420 permanent employees. Of these, 150 are on the payroll of the wood products unit, i.e. the LVL mill and sawmill. In addition, the mill creates jobs for an estimated 400 people in wood procurement and approximately 200 person-years for contractors.
4. The Varkaus integrated plant consumes two million cubic meters of pine and spruce per year. The wood is sourced from a radius of one hundred kilometers. The annual capacity of the wood product unit includes 260,000 m3 of sawn timber, of which 120,000 m3 is wood-based products. 85,000 m3 of LVL veneer lumber and 30,000 m3 of pellets are produced.
5. The LVL elements, sawn timber and cardboard manufactured in Varkaus are used both on domestic construction sites and in international markets. Most of the products are exported. The main market is Europe, but products are also exported to Asia, South America and North America.
Responsible carbon footprint of construction
Satta continues the conversation on environmental issues.
"There are a lot of things being done here for the benefit of nature and the environment."
The Varkaus LVL factory produces renewable raw materials to replace concrete and steel in construction. A wooden building constructed from LVL elements is erected on site faster than a comparable concrete building. Each
A pressed veneer blank binds carbon throughout its entire service life, often decades or even centuries. As a load-bearing structure, LVL veneer lumber means lightness and durability, as well as a small carbon footprint. The majority of LVL production is exported both to Europe and beyond.
Take, for example, the new Stora Enso headquarters mentioned earlier. The trees used in its wooden elements have sequestered 6,000 tons of carbon dioxide as they grow. They will store carbon in the building for at least the next 100 years. According to calculations, the building will store as much carbon as will be generated from its use over the next 50 years.
The Nötköt Retriever and nature hobbies
Ilkka Satta lives with his wife in Varkaus near the factory. His wife works as a shift supervisor at a sawmill. For the summer, they move to the Sulkava cottage, a 45-minute drive away. Satta also heads out into nature all year round. He goes jogging with his Cairn Terrier Munkki and his Labrador Retriever Hippu, whom Satta jokingly calls the "snappy retriever." He praises the nature of Varkaus.
“One route I like is the three-kilometer nature trail that goes around Kämäri Island between Ämmäkoski Rapids and the Taipale Canal.”
In the summer, Satta goes fishing, and in the fall, she diligently fills her mushroom basket and berry bucket.
"I collect a lot of mushrooms. Funnel mushrooms, chanterelles and boletus."
Satta cooks pike perch that emerges from winter nets at home and willingly shares the catch with colleagues and relatives. Hunting is also a pleasure. Satta starts his summer vacation at the beginning of September, when the deer hunt begins in Lapland. The man, who spent his childhood in the north, walks in the familiar landscapes of the forest several times a year. The annual cycle also includes hunting wildfowl.
The cultural enthusiasm, fueled by his wife, began in the stands of the Varkaus Theatre. In addition to local offerings, they have driven to the summer theatre all the way to Seinäjoki. In the autumn, tickets can be found in Helsinki for the play My Brother the Lion's Heart.
Varkaus is a good city
There is no need for a separate guide to introduce Varkaus, as Ilkka Satta will do that during the interview. There are so many ingredients for a good life in Varkaus that Satta plans to stay in the city when he retires in a little over ten years. He calls Varkaus a good city.
Satta particularly praises the diverse nature and outdoor trails in the region. The fifteen-kilometer Heinämäki route heads from the city center via the Honkapirtti outdoor hut towards Heinämäki. Satta's favorite is the Kämäri and Ämmäkoski nature and outdoor recreation area. Ämmäkoski flows through the middle of the city, right next to the factory. The rapids were known as an oasis for fishermen as early as the 1500th century. At the beginning of the 1900th century, it was dammed for energy production. The environmental flow was restored to the rapids when the Stora Enso factory gave up part of its hydropower a few years ago. The largest natural bypass in Finland, which bypasses the regulating dam and was completed in November 2022, reopened the route for migratory fish to their spawning grounds. Since then, the fry production of endangered lake trout has multiplied. The factory staff have also participated in the practical renovation by graveling the spawning grounds and moving stones.
Ilkka Satta also praises the Varkaus Theatre, where he often sits with his wife. From the programme, he mentions the musical comedy Rajaton raakus, set to music by late Finnish artists, in which Olavi Virran sang the role of the tango king Petri HervantoThe family comedy Root Care continues on the program. Newly coming is Tuomas Kyrön the musical Mielesäpahoittaja, based on best-selling novels, and Ruhtinas Ahlström, a play partly set in Varkaus, about the patron of Finland's largest private company and the richest man in the country.
