Kesla strives for sustainable solutions

Kesla is a successful, international, and a highly esteemed cooperation partner in its field. Despite being publicly listed company with global operations, in terms of values, Kesla is still a family business with its flexible decision-making processes and human-centric approach.

As a listed company, Kesla’s operations need to be transparent and stand up to close scrutiny in all respects. Sustainability is one of the company’s core values, which also calls for sustainability management in all operations.

Quite recently, in mid-February, Kesla published the Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2019 (available in Finnish here) – the second of its kind in the company’s history. Preparation of the report is the responsibility of a working group led by Kesla’s Financial Manager Sarita Kortelainen.

“Kesla’s size as a company would not require us to compile a sustainability report. When we in 2017 first introduced the idea of preparing such a report, the task seemed quite challenging at the beginning”, Sarita Kortelainen explains about the preparation process.

– Sarita Kortelainen, Financial Manager, Kesla Oyj

“But once we got down to work, it turned out to be really rewarding. We came to notice that Kesla’s ways of working were already naturally sustainable in respect to all our key themes: safety, economic prospertity, partnerships, and resource efficiency. We talked through our values and strategy. After that we prepared a transparent report of Kesla’s ways of working and their impacts. Kesla has been awarded the respected Finnish Key Flag Symbol for promoting Finnish work. Kesla’s manufacturing and used materials are for the most part domestic. Moreover, our cooperation partners are in developed countries and are important players in their field. Thus, the risk of child labor, corruption, and environmental issues is in principle low”, states Sarita, pleased.

Kesla’s Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2019 reveals that the company’s investments in employee competencies and wellbeing, quality management systems, and production have indeed delivered results worth sharing: the employees continue working until retirement age, customer loyalty is high, the electricity consumption and harmful emissions in production have been reduced, and the recycling rate is high – up to 100% at its best.

Kesla has three factories in Finland, a sales office in Germany, and exports to 44 countries – accounting for almost 70% of all business. The company currently employs around 250 people. www.kesla.com

In our new article series “Roima Year of Sustainability 2020”, we open up the floor to our customers and ask them to share how sustainability is reflected in their everyday operations.

We are happy and honored to be the long-standing partner of Kesla and proud that a company like Kesla trusts in Roima’s expertise and solutions in their advanced product management.