No more salt on the roads! Introducing Kemion from Ylöjärvi, Finland

An interview with CEO Timo Nissinen.

The use of salt in de-icing roads can be reduced (Photo: Kemion)

What is the core idea behind your company’s product?

Our products are eco-friendly, biodegradable de-icing and dust-binding solutions that replace the traditionally used salts on the roads. Kemion aims to minimize the environmental impact of salting and improve the environmental effects of road maintenance. In short, we offer ecological, environmentally-friendly ice melting and dust binding products.

How could collaboration with Scaleup Launchpad benefit your company?

The international perspectives interests us, expanding our viewpoint beyond our homeland to neighboring regions. The Baltics and Sweden are strategical areas for our company. Through this, we seek networking opportunities among both companies and city regions involved in this project. We aim to learn and gain insights on market entries. City regions intrigue us as platforms. We have yet to commence operations neither in Tartu or Norrköping.

How well do you know the Swedish and Estonian markets in your business sector?

In Sweden, we've conducted a preliminary market research in the ice-melting sector, so we have a basic understanding of the market. In Estonia, we haven’t conducted extensive market research, but over the years, we've gained a general view of Estonia as an operating environment. We’ve done initial market research in Sweden and we see that our services are well suited there.

What were your first impressions of other companies involved in the project?

There are interesting companies participating. Even though there weren't products directly related to ours, it's believed that entrepreneurs and businesses collectively grapple with similar issues, which will surely spur discussions. While Buildie focuses more on the ICT and data side, they, like us, are involved with infrastructure and maintenance matters. Both Buildie and Kemion have a common customer interface.

Kemion is one of three companies from the Business Tampere area participating in the development program. We present all participating companies in the blogs.