Tuomo Airaksinen, Invest in Finland
Release Date: 2009-12-18
Tuomo Airaksinen, CEO of Invest in Finland, has been interviewed by GreenTechFocus to talk about Finland as an attractive business platform with excellent technology expertise, efficient innovations and, most importantly, good access to the European market.What are the competitive advantages for foreign companies setting up their European headquarters or R&D centres in Finland?
FDI in Finland is often related to knowledge-driven investments. Finland has several high-tech clusters with many small technology companies that have cutting-edge expertise. These include companies specializing in clean technology, wireless and mobile solutions, health care and life sciences, and new materials and processes.
Finland’s workforce is highly educated and computer literate. According to WEF’s Global Competitiveness Report 2008, Finland has the best availability of scientists and engineers in the world and they are trained by the best educational system in the world. The workforce also includes a large number of other professionals with university degrees in diverse fields. In the past decade, the number of R&D personnel in Finland has grown from 40,000 to nearly 80,000, which is 2% of the overall labor force and the highest figure among the OECD countries. The number of doctoral degrees has also doubled in the past ten years.
Foreign companies operating in Finland are eligible for a wide range of government and EU incentives on an equal footing with Finnish companies. Business aid and EU finance to companies is coordinated by the Employment and Economic Development Centres (T&E Centres), whose 15 regional offices also provide consulting, training and advice on registration issues and location choices. Foreign investors can benefit from several different types of support including investment aid, business development aid, subsidies for start-up companies, transport aid, energy subsidies and tax relief on fixed assets.
The state-owned financing company Finnvera plc offers a wide range of financial services from loans and guarantees to start-ups and micro-enterprises, to export credit guarantees to large exporters and their financiers. Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, provides low-interest loans and grants to challenging and innovative projects potentially leading to global success stories. In 2008, Tekes invested €516 million in a total of 1983 innovative projects.
Finland, the only Nordic country that has adopted the euro, also offers a direct access to European Union and European markets.
Invest in Finland focuses its activities on certain sectors and companies to increase R&D investments into Finland. However, Invest in Finland’s goal is to attract also other types of FDI into Finland. Finland receives less FDI than an average EU country, probably because of the size of our market. In spite of that Invest in Finland has worked with several interesting and significant companies, and has had the opportunity to assist companies that are looking for business opportunities.
In overall use of renewable energy, Finland is one of the leaders in Europe: share of renewable consumption to gross final energy consumption in Finland is 28,5% when EU-average is 8,5%. Yet we are more ambitious – we are committed to increase the share of renewables even higher, up to 38% by 2020. This opens up a wide range of business opportunities, especially within biomass but also in wind energy and biogas markets. For example the use of wood chips will be tripled, from 7TWh to 21 TWh.
In Finland, wood is traditionally used for conventional solid biofuels (e.g. pellet, briquette and wood chips) and in the future for products of biorefineries such as liquid biofuels, biochemicals and biopolymers. Research and innovations support the development of biorefineries. Currently three different Finnish forest companies are piloting biorefineries, being once again pioneers in the world.
A good example of Finnish innovativeness is combined heat and power generation (CHP). In November 2008 International Energy Agency acclaimed Finland as a world leader in prioritizing combined heat and power/district heating-cooling, with a clear and proven strategy for bringing about significant market development and the implementation of at least one global best-practice policy measure. In 2007, CHP produced 74% of the heat needed for district heating and generated 29% of the country’s electricity supply in Finland.
Both wind energy as well as biogas sectors are still at the immature state in Finland hence offering untapped business opportunities for investors. To fasten the green development, the Finnish Government is determined to introduce feed-in tariffs both for wind and biogas, a scheme taking place from year 2010 onwards. For investors this means guaranteed prices and support from the highest governmental level. Annual climate and energy funding, worth over a half billion euros, provides Finnish companies and public organizations strong financial support and incentives.
Finland furnishes variety of opportunities in clean technologies and renewable energy. Should an investor look for new markets, Finland caters some unique market openings even in the European scale. Being a leading country in the utilization of wood energy, Finland can serve as a source of leading technologies and best practices as well as a developer society. Moreover, the Northern climate creates an ideal test laboratory for new technologies that is strengthened by the network of environmental expertise and the best business environment, a ranking made by the Economist's Intelligence Unit in June 2009.
How important are China’s booming environmental technologies needs in Finland’s internationalisation of its economy and what are the country’s ambitions in this sense?
Cooperation between China and Finland has been strong for years, and Finland hopes this cooperation to continue – also in the cleantech sector. During last years Finnish companies have invested into China, and hopefully there will be more and more Chinese companies benefiting from Finnish business opportunities in the future. Finland finds Chinese companies and other organizations interesting and important cooperation partners: Chinese companies have brought to Finland both expert knowledge and capital - but also essential international networks. Chinese market also offers lots of opportunities for Finnish companies that are looking for overseas business opportunities.
| Company: | Invest in Finland |
| Position: | CEO |
| Country: | Finland |