Tampella

Today was the first art class this year, took the photo after the class before picking up Emma from her practise. (Her flu is already much better.)

We had plus degrees and snow started to melt away, again. And footpaths becoming slippery, again. 

The old and iconic Tampella-sign can be seen in the picture on top of the old factory building, that once belonged to a company named Tampella. It doesn't exist any more, but the sigh is there to remind of Tampere's industrial history.


Oy Tampella Ab was a Finnish heavy industry manufacturer, a maker of paper machines, locomotives, military weaponry, as well as wood-based products such as packaging. 

Until 1963 the company was called Tampereen Pellava- ja Rauta-Teollisuus Osake-Yhtiö (The Flax and Iron Industry of Tampere Stock Company). It was a company based on the merger in 1861 of two factories - a linen mill and foundry - situated by the Tammerkoski rapids. After a modest start it grew to become an institution employing thousands of people in the centre of Tampere alone, and more in its other units. In the 1950s the company's name was shortened to Tampella. The company went into decline during the 1980s and eventually went bankrupt in 1990. After bankruptcy the company's operations were split and sold. The industrial activity, under the new ownership, in the centre of Tampere gradually ceased and the machines finally stopped operating in 2000. Soon after this most of the buildings in the industrial complex were demolished, though some had already been demolished. Other buildings were converted to new commercial uses, but most were demolished to make way for blocks of flats.


+2°C, cloudy