Finland Industry-Academic Effort Targets Optical Measurement

The Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation, Tekes, is pledging some €3 million in funding for an industry-academic project targeting development and commercialization of new technologies in optical measurement. The project, dubbed Terävä, would tie together the recently acquired automation arm of the Finland-based multinational industrial-services firm Valmet, along with “several small and medium-size companies,” with academic/research partners VTT Technical Research Center and the Tempere University of Technology.
 
The project aims to push forward imaging and optical measurement for “web-like” products in the quality measurement and control area, as well as for specific applications in the medical, food, packaging and electronics industries. Tekes is envisioning as much as “€125 million combined revenue growth” blossoming from the original €3 million investment.
 
Based in Espoo, Finland, Valmet is a €2.5 billion supplier of technology and services to industries that use bio-based raw materials, especially in the pulp, paper and energy sectors. It entered the automation business in April 2015 with the acquisition of Process Automation Systems, based in Tempere, Finland.
 
The Valmet Automation techonology manager, Markku Mäntylä, noted in a press release that one of the project’s more interesting aspects is “the collaboration with the young measurement technology spinoff companies” that are also part of the partnership, and that will provide more scope for commercializing the technology in markets beyond the ones that Valmet emphasizes. Those smaller partners include eight companies—Spectral Engines Oy, Oplatek Group Oy, Advacam Oy, Offcode Oy, TimeGate Instruments Oy, Rikola Ltd, FocalSpec Oy and Kemira Oyj—said to be involved in a wide variety of measurement technologies.