The purity and richness of Finnish nature creates opportunities for business cooperation
Kirjoittanut Vilma Lehto
Pekka Kilpeläinen and the research team in Ireland.
The University of Oulu cooperates with both Finnish and international companies. Head of Research Pekka Kilpeläinen works on collaborative projects related to health and well-being. His and the research team's tasks include listening to the needs and wishes of the partners, enabling their product development, and finding suitable financing.
"We start from the premise that what we do should be beneficial to companies in different sectors," Kilpeläinen says.
However, cooperation is by no means one-way, as the intention is to share knowledge and competence in both directions. When you have conversations with people interested in similar things, you can learn a lot. For example, your partners may have different technologies or methods that they use, and this can bring a new perspective to your own work.
Naturality ahead
Kilpeläinen and the research team work with collaborations related to health, well-being, and natural biomasses. This also includes development projects and business collaborations related to natural products. The use of natural raw materials and naturalness in other ways can be seen to be the prevailing trend today.
“Finland has the natural competitive advantage of having clean and rich natural resources here. Therefore, Finnish partners are thought to be useful for various projects. This can also lead to international collaborations."
The University of Oulu has collaborated with, for example, Irish, Latvian, Estonian and Scottish partners. In most cases, however, the partners are local smaller and larger companies from the Kainuu region or its neighbouring regions.
"The justification for the existence of such a regional unit is that we are able to benefit local companies and businesses in cooperation and support their operations," Kilpeläinen mentions.
There has also been cooperation with larger companies. Lumene, which uses natural materials in its production (see the article in the Kehittyvä elintarvike magazine), has been a partner of the University of Oulu for a long time. The lingonberry extract that Lumene uses in its products was produced together and patented several years ago. In addition, other product that was developed together and what Lumene uses is rosebay willowherb flower extract.
A smaller cooperation company that Kilpeläinen mentions as an example is Raisan Terveyspirtti from Kainuu, and their Vaicute natural cosmetics. The university has helped the company by performing analytics for the product line in question and the raw materials used in it.
“We have had several projects with companies related to natural product analytics or potential new raw materials and preliminary product idea testing. For example, we may have explored the properties of various raw materials or looked at the functional compounds present in them.”
What funding for business collaboration?
There are several programmes that fund business partnerships, the development of operating conditions for companies or, for example, the development of skills in the company. Kilpeläinen helps companies find suitable project funding.
For example, funding can be obtained from the European Agricultural fund for Rural Development, the EU structural funds, Business Finland or the international Interreg or ERA-NET programmes.
“However, it is good to know that in general, public funding cannot be used to carry out research that benefits just one company. The project must be put together in such a way that more companies are involved."
One of Kilpeläinen's tasks is to bring companies interested in the same issues together. In addition, he helps companies to spot such funding-related regulations.
Partnership to support growth
There are many smaller companies operating in the natural products sector in Finland that have a realistic potential to grow. Even though the companies are small, the entrepreneurs behind them are enthusiastic about their field.
"These people have been interested, for example, in dyeing yarns with natural plants or in making cosmetics themselves from natural materials. They have figured out that they can even make a living from their hobby.”
In fact, there are examples of such companies in our neighbour countries that have grown from small businesses to international brands. For example, the Swedish natural cosmetics Care of Gerd may sound familiar for this reason.
If business expansion is the goal, partnership can be one of the possible keys to its success.
“For us, the main thing is to listen to the wishes of companies and possibly share ideas. We can offer broader views on, for example, which direction a company should take next in its product development," Kilpeläinen says.
The University of Oulu organises an annual University Business Forum for the University's stakeholders and staff in October. UBF welcomes all business representatives who are interested in collaborating with the university. Follow the marketing related to the event from the communication channels of the University of Oulu Innovation Centre.
Vilma Lehto
Viestinnän harjoittelija / Communications Intern
+358 50 305 5761
vilma.lehto@oulu.fi
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