Search for: Select region Oilon Products References Contact us Downloads Webshop Oilon Care Warmth comes from the heart Mar 17, 2021 | News UK The idea of a family busi­ness is per­son­i­fied in Oilon’s Board: Chair­man of the Board, Kjell Forsén, and Vice Chair­man of the Board, Päivi Leiwo, are a married couple. In turn, Board members Celia and Mikael Svensk, are Päivi’s chil­dren. Oilon, a pioneer in clean energy tech­no­logy, is gearing up for rapid growth. A human approach brings meaning to life and work, say the leaders of the family busi­ness. Hard work and love. Every­one deserves a job they like or even love. The success of Oilon is based on this simple philo­sophy, says Päivi Leiwo, Vice Chair­man of the Board. “I’m serious. Life’s ups and downs have made me realise that a loving atti­tude is the only thing that matters in the end. I learned this from my mother.” Päivi Leiwo was ten when her family acquired Oilon in its entirety. Ever since she has closely fol­lowed the family busi­ness. Accord­ing to Päivi, love is the basis for build­ing not only per­sonal well­being but also the well­being of the entire work com­munity. It has a great deal to do with cor­por­ate social respons­ib­il­ity and ethics. Päivi believes that it is import­ant to be a part of cre­at­ing that kind of organ­isa­tional culture and, indeed, that kind of world. It’s no acci­dent that the slogan of the family busi­ness has for a long time been Oilon – The warm way. The warmth comes from the heart. A face is a com­pet­it­ive advant­age In the space of 60 years, Oilon has risen from a two-man startup in a garage to become a global trail­blazer in clean energy tech­no­logy with 370 employ­ees on four con­tin­ents. The group’s turnover in 2020 was approx­im­ately 70 million euros. Oilon’s com­bus­tion tech­no­logy and heat pumps are known as some of the most advanced in the world. Over one million of their burners have been sold. Within Oilon it has become appar­ent that a family busi­ness is more appeal­ing in the cus­tom­ers’ eyes than a face­less giant company or one working in the shadow of venture cap­it­al­ists. Many of Oilon’s cus­tom­ers are also family busi­nesses. “We work on an extremely long basis. We do not optim­ise our oper­a­tions for the next quarter rather we think much further ahead”, says Kjell Forsén, a new member of the Oilon team. Kjell Forsén is new to Oilon – he has been Chair­man of the Board at Oilon since October 2020. In this new role he follows his wife, Päivi Leiwo, who inher­ited the role of Chair­man of the Board from her father, Ossi, in 2009. Päivi is now Vice Chair­man of the Board. She has worked in the family busi­ness since she was 25 years old. Forsén joined Oilon as Chair­man of the Board in Autumn 2020. Pre­vi­ously, he worked for many years as CEO at Vaisala, another family busi­ness. Let’s open up these Oilon family con­nec­tions now for the reader. The father-figure of the company, Ossi Leiwo, joined Oilon straight away in 1961. He rose to the pos­i­tion of CEO in 1974, and Oilon became a family company in the same year. Ossi guided the company as CEO for 23 years and as Chair­man of the Board for 35 years. After Ossi’s retire­ment in 2009, his daugh­ter, Päivi, became Chair­man of the Board. She led the board until 2020 when her husband, Kjell, took over. The third gen­er­a­tion is also involved: Päivi’s chil­dren, Mikael and Celia Svensk are new members of the board at Oilon. They are already famil­iar with the oper­a­tions of the family busi­ness and have com­pleted intern­ships at Oilon premises abroad. Mikael and Celia are both stu­dents. Mikael and Celia are the third-generation at Oilon. Päivi Leiwo’s chil­dren became Oilon Board members in 2020. “A family busi­ness is a won­der­ful thing. It’s a joy and an honour to pass on this kind of cul­tural her­it­age to one’s chil­dren”, Päivi says. Päivi got her first job at Oilon as a 14-year-old during winter hol­i­days from school. She has worked full time at the company since she was 25. Out­siders are always inter­ested in how decision-making works when the major­ity of the board are members of the same family. “We are always of the same opinion. I know it sounds unbe­liev­able, but decisions are made in great harmony.” This is how you keep a cus­tomer for 20 years An uncom­prom­ising customer-oriented approach is emblem­atic of Oilon. In prac­tice, it means that the cus­tomer’s require­ments are under­stood in detail and their issues are quickly fixed. “The dif­fer­ence between com­pet­it­ors is usually the decis­ive factor here: who gets the job done and who throws in the towel. The most loyal cus­tom­ers are those for whom we find the best solu­tions”, Kjell says. Com­bus­tion tech­no­logy and heat pump pro­jects are usually com­plic­ated. In those cases the cus­tomer, sales, and pro­duc­tion teams have to speak exactly the same lan­guage. “It’s some­times scary to think: have we really done abso­lutely everything pos­sible to solve the cus­tomer’s problem”, Päivi says. Clearly a lot has been done well. The 20-year cus­tomer rela­tion­ships, for example, in India, China, Denmark, Russia and Singa­pore speak to that. They con­tinue to this day. The customer-oriented approach is under the mag­ni­fy­ing glass also on CEO, Tero Tulokas’, desk. He is cur­rently leading a project to develop cus­tomer exper­i­ence. Oilon’s CEO Tero Tulokas. “We monitor many things: how easily can we be found, how quickly do we respond, what is the quality of the responses, how long do we spend at the cus­tomer’s premises, and so on. The data are col­lec­ted sys­tem­at­ic­ally and are com­pared with our object­ives. Tero has a par­tic­u­larly good back­ground for devel­op­ing cus­tomer exper­i­ence: he was himself pre­vi­ously an Oilon cus­tomer. Before joining Oilon in 2008 he worked as the CEO of Hamina Energy where he bought burners for dis­trict heating plants from Oilon. Tero worked on these pro­jects over­see­ing the work, and there­fore became famil­iar with both the tech­no­logy and how the equip­ment works. “I was part of the team that com­mis­sioned the first Oilon burner back when I was 7 years old. My dad was in charge of the build­ing ser­vices in the armed forces, and I went with him. The dual burner in ques­tion was installed in the gar­rison’s heating install­a­tion. It is still in use.” Tero says. During dif­fi­cult years we invest in devel­op­ment Another ace up our sleeve is without doubt product devel­op­ment. This is thanks to Ossi who was respons­ible for the tech­no­logy in the early days of the company. Long-term CEO, Eero Pekkola (1997 – 2017), who fol­lowed Ossi, also focused heavily on product devel­op­ment. It is no coin­cid­ence that the current CEO also works as the head of product devel­op­ment. During the past year of COVID-19, Oilon increased its product devel­op­ment budget by over 10 percent, even though the pan­demic increased costs and there were chal­lenges with sales. “Oilon has always worked on the prin­ciple that even during dif­fi­cult times we invest in devel­op­ing our products. Making savings in that area would be like sawing the branch you are sitting on”, Tero says. Product devel­op­ment is import­ant also during good years. Even though the classic Oilon Junior designed for small houses sold excep­tion­ally well in its time, Ossi saw that it wouldn’t last forever. That’s why it’s import­ant to have a finger in many dif­fer­ent pies. Now, the Oilon Junior accounts for 3 percent of sales. At its height it accoun­ted for 80 percent. As of 2021, Oilon’s port­fo­lio includes hun­dreds of burners whose power output ranges from 10 kilo­watts to over 90 mega­watts. The scale of indus­trial heat pumps reaches from 100 kilo­watts to as much as 50 mega­watt systems. Their deliv­ery includes auto­ma­tion and control systems. In addi­tion, Oilon pro­duces ground source heat pumps and their accom­pa­ny­ing boilers and vent­il­a­tion tech­no­logy designed for real estate prop­er­ties. Alto­gether the com­pon­ents and spare parts make up over 10 000 ware­house pieces. Oilon has factor­ies in Finland, USA, Russia, and China. The company also ser­vices its own products. At the moment, product devel­op­ment is focused on redu­cing emis­sions. “The emis­sions goals and reg­u­la­tions of our cus­tom­ers are being tightened all the time. The world needs cleantech and we have to be along for that ride. This is a large part of Oilon’s added value.” Kjell says. Thanks to product devel­op­ment, Oilon’s heat pumps can magic­ally produce 100-degree dis­trict heating from sub-zero air. There are not many who can match that. Climate change can be stopped Climate warming is a mega­trend that has increased the demand for Oilon’s tech­no­logy around the globe. Coal is being replaced by natural gas, and new advanced gas burners are needed. Sales of burners increases the need to min­im­ise particles, nitro­gen oxides and other local air pol­lut­ants. The biggest growth in burners is expec­ted in the Low-NOx range. The goals of states and energy com­pan­ies to reduce carbon dioxide emis­sions is fuel­ling the demand for large heat pumps. For example, high-temperature heat pumps con­nec­ted to dis­trict heating dir­ectly reduce the amount of coal needed. Indus­trial plants are looking for sens­ible solu­tions for heating and cooling, and thus redu­cing their carbon foot­print. “Hope­fully, soci­et­ies will wake up and start to slow climate warming. The solu­tions are within reach if we decide to take them into use. Vehicle emis­sions could easily be more than halved if top speeds and road speed limits were reduced. Together, tech­no­logy and reg­u­la­tions could work wonders.” Tero says. The climate theme is also famil­iar to him from dis­cus­sions with his own teen­aged chil­dren. Dad has to think care­fully about what he says. “When I was young, I was worried about acid rain. That problem was solved. When con­fron­ted with big chal­lenges we need pos­it­iv­ity and optim­ism. That’s an import­ant message for young­sters.” 90 percent growth in one year Growth has always been a part of Oilon’s story, and that trend con­tin­ues. Sales of indus­trial heat pumps have grown by as much as 90 percent a year over the past two years. The pro­duc­tion facil­it­ies in Kokkola are being quad­rupled in size. A good example of this new type of demand is a project in north­east China announced in Feb­ru­ary 2021. Oilon will deliver eight Chill­Heat heat pumps to China’s largest battery park in the city of Dalian. The battery park stores elec­tri­city, which helps wind energy integ­ra­tion into the Liaon­ing province’s network. Oilon’s heat pumps capture the waste heat pro­duced by the bat­ter­ies and trans­fer it to the dis­trict heating network. “This is a great project and speaks of the bene­fits of heat pumps in many indus­trial pro­cesses. Of course, it is also fant­astic to be part of a project increas­ing renew­able energy in China.”, Tero says. China is almost like a second home to Oilon. They have been selling burners there for 30 years, and its factory has oper­ated in the city of Wux for 20 years. Oilon’s burners have cleaned chiefly the air in the capital city, Peking. Oilon is now estab­lish­ing a strong foothold in the large heat pump market in China. There are also signs of growth in Central Europe and North America. TEXT Jussi Lait­inen IMAGES Juho Paavola TRANS­LA­TION Robert Brooks Products References Dealers and maintenance companies Oilon Ground Source Heat pumps Conditions of use Privacy policy Career at Oilon Oilon Contact Us Oilon Group Oy Metsä-Pietilänkatu 1, PL 5, 15801 Lahti, Finland Phone: (03) 85 761 Email: info@oilon.com Webshop Oilon Selection Tool Oilon Care Sitemap © Oilon Group Oy We use cookies to optimize our website and our service. Privacy Policy Functional Marketing Accept all Save preferences