Metso's Lokomo celebrates 100 years - From steam locomotive manufacturer to crushing equipment competence center
Metso's Tampere unit, better known locally as Lokomo, is celebrating its one hundredth year of industrial existence in May in Tampere, Finland. Oy Lokomo Ab started operating in Tampere in April 1915. Today Metso's Tampere unit is the company's most important global competence center for mobile crushers. The crushing and screening equipment to efficiently and safely crush rock and ore are developed in Tampere.
"Lokomo's one-hundred-year history is indicative of its ability to transform and be innovative and to remain at the cutting edge of technology over the course of a century. Throughout its history, Metso's Tampere unit has boldly transformed and developed fresh innovations to meet the needs of the day. An excellent example of this is the unit's evolution into a globally significant crushing equipment competence centre for today's Metso," says Metso's President and CEO Matti Kähkönen.
"The Lokomo unit's success and development into the nerve centre of Metso's crushing technology over the course of one hundred years wouldn't have been possible without the thousands of Lokomo employees who helped to build the unit into a strong and internationally significant Metso competence center," notes Pirjo Virtanen, VP Operations and Site Manager, Metso.
Lokomo started its operations in 1915 as a steam-engine factory competing with the local Tampella. The company's name stems from the word locomotive. Just a couple of years later, Lokomo manufactured its first crushers, which were delivered to the National Board of Public Roads and Waterways. A key driver behind the production of locomotives and crushers was the company-owned steel foundry, which was very modern already back in the 1920s.
Lokomo has manufactured a wide-ranging portfolio of products through the years: church bells, peat harvesters, steamrollers and road graders, mobile cranes and forestry equipment. The two deep-sea diving bells manufactured for the Soviet Union's Ministry of Education and Science were the source of a minor foreign policy scandal.
The Tampere factory with its over 700 employees manufactures the bulk of Metso's mobile crushing plants, of which more than 7,000 have been manufactured over 30 years.
Metso is the world's leading industrial company in the mining and aggregates industries and in the flow control business. Our knowledge, people and solutions help drive sustainable improvements in performance and profitability in our customers' businesses.
Metso has an uncompromising attitude towards safety. Our products range from mining and construction equipment and systems to industrial valves and controls. Our solutions are delivered and supported by decades of process knowledge and a broad scope of services backed by a global footprint of over 90 service centers, thousands of service employees, and an extensive logistics network.
Metso is listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki, Finland. In 2014, Metso's net sales totaled EUR 3.7 billion. Metso employs approximately 14,000 industry experts in more than 50 countries. Expect results.
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For further information, please contact:
Pirjo Virtanen, VP Operations and Site Manager, Tampere, Finland, Metso, tel. +358 20 484 4237, email: pirjo.virtanen@metso.com