Tikkurila Oy, which is responsible for the paints and coatings business of the Finnish chemicals company Kemira Oyj, takes its entire customer-service concept with it, including its quality and environmental systems, when it sets itself up in the Baltic countries and Russia.

When it established itself in the Baltic countries, Tikkurila also took its operating system, which depicts the whole process from marketing through product development, choice of raw-material suppliers, planning of production processes, production, packaging and storage to delivery and the post-delivery specialist service, as well as the disposal or recycling of a product.

Certified quality and environmental systems are being used in Tikkurila's Baltic companies; in Russia they are just making their entrance. Tikkurila endeavours to follow the principles of sustainable development in all its operations. Taking into account the environmental, health and safety issues is an important part of the whole organization's operations.

The efficient control of the flow of materials and information is aimed at environmentally sound production methods. Marketing, on the other hand, tries to direct consumer purchasing behaviour towards favouring environment-friendly choices. The personnel's competence holds a key position in all this.

Customer training has always been a fixed part of Tikkurila's marketing both in Finland and abroad. Painting schools have been arranged for dealers in the Baltic and CIS countries for years; the paint shops are an important link with the hundreds of millions of consumers on these markets. Tikkurila Oy's new training centre, which will be completed at Vantaa, near Helsinki, in the autumn of 2003, will provide better conditions for arranging practical learning days and work demonstrations.

Tikkurila began paint production with an Estonian chemicals company at Tallinn in 1992. The production of decorative paints was started by using renewed equipment from an old paint factory and western technology. The Estonian factory was followed by factories in Riga in Latvia and St Petersburg and Moscow in Russia. There is also a sales company at Vilnius in Lithuania. Siberian customers are served by a sales company at Novosibirsk behind the Ural mountains.

Tikkurila is now the leading paint supplier in Estonia. It is also strengthening its position in the other Baltic countries and in Russia, where it is the best-known western paint producer. The use of the tinting systems gives a clear competitive edge in marketing the paints. There are tinting machines supplied by Tikkurila in hundreds of paint shops in the area of the former Soviet Union.

>> www.tikkurila.com

Photo: Juha Rahkonen