Do you know what GE, RUAG, U-Blox and Morita Holdings are doing differently than your company?

What do General Electric, RUAG, U-Blox and Morita Holdings have in common and what are they doing differently than your company?

With over 100 years of manufacturing heritage Tampere Region is a traditional centre of Finnish industry. Today, the region is best known for its high tech expertise and extensive know-how in various fields. The leading industrial companies like AGCO Power, Cargotec, John Deere, Fastems and Bronto Skylift have seen the opportunities creating the rare combination of traditional industries and ICT that is unique to Tampere Region.

Seize the opportunity - 1.000 ICT professionals out of the 16.000 employed in the ICT sector in the region are becoming available with competences for global markets.

The region holds also a genuinely world-class ICT and mobile ecosystem and is a home to companies like Intel, Microsoft and Nokia. Companies in need of ICTprofessionals should act now to seize the opportunity created by recently announced layoffs by both Nokia and Microsoft. There will soon be around 1,000 ICT professionals available, with experience of 10-20 years and with ability to build new, innovative solutions for any industry. Especially companies looking to set up product development, and willing to move fast, there is now a unique opportunity to acquire fully functioning product creation teams to develop advanced connected products.

Many companies working on global market have already found the business environment and high-level of competences attractive for their business needs.

Looking at the time span from 2015 to today, many companies known in the global markets have already benefited from the diverse competences available in Tampere region. In case of many companies the expansion to Tampere region took place through acquisitions: the American General Electric, Swiss RUAG, Japanese Morita Holdings, Norwegian Kongsberg, American CoorsTekSensors and American Lynx Technology: There are also companies like the Swiss U-Blox and Finnish Suunto and Tecnotree that opened new R&D centers in the region.

GENERAL ELECTRIC
American General Electric acquired the energy businesses of Alstom for 12.4 B€. The energy businesses cover both power generation and grid solutions. Part of the transaction is the Alstom Grid's factory in Tampere, which engineers and manufactures products and systems for reactive power conpensation and harmonic filtering. Exports account for 90% of the factory output.

RUAG
Patria's space unit was acquired by Swiss RUAG. The Patria's space unit has been delivering turnkey equipment for spacecraft demands, the key product areas being spacecraft control electronics, electrical power subsystems, electronic units and related test equipment. The unit has been very successful in various satellite programs of the European Space Agency ESA. The newly founded company RUAG Space Finland has about 30 employees in Tampere.

U-BLOX
Swiss U-Blox, a global leader in wireless and positioning semiconductors and models, inaugurated a new R&D center in Tampere in December 2015. The new center is the company's 13th research and development site worldwide, initially focusing on further developing GNSS technology. The new R&D center is strategically located in the Tampere region, well-known as a high-tech hub with state-of-the-art companies and its famous Tampere university of Technology. During 2016 the unit is expected to have 20 employees.

MORITA
Japanese Morita Holdings acquired Bronto Skylift for 80M€. Bronto Skylift is a leading global provider of truck mounted hydraulic articulated aerial platforms or combined platform ladders. Morita believes that integrating Bronto into its group will contribute to the groups sustainable growth enhancing its overseas fire fighting vehicles business and obtaining Bronto's state-of-the-art combined platform ladders technology.

KONGSBERG
Norwegian Kongsberg buys 49.9% of Patria for 272M€ creating a leading Nordic defence partnership in 2016 . Patria is Finland's leading defence supplier and owns 50% of the shared in the Norwegian company Nammo. As a partnership, Kongsberg, Patria and Nammo hold both complementary and world leading products as well as key geographic areas that strenthen each other. Patria, Patria Aerostructures, Patria Aviation, Patria Land Systems, Patria Land Services, and Patria Hägglunds have offices in Tampere or its near vicinity.

COORSTEK SENSORS
American CoorsTek Sensors acquired in 2015 Pegasor, one of the Scandinavia's most promising growth companies in the cleantech sector. CoorsTek develops and deploys smart sensors across diverse markets, including automotive, HVAC, manufacturing and governmental public safety/public health. Pegasor with its innovative products in fine and nanoparticle sensor technologies enables CoorsTek Sensors to expand beyond its current solutions into the growing market of solutions to monitor air quality, including sensors targeting urban air quality monitoring networks; indoor air quality monitoring in commercial and industrial facilities; and smoke-stack emission monitoring systems.

LYNX TECHNOLOGY
American Lynx Technology acquired European and US connected home business operations of PacketVideo. The acquisition was announced in August 2015. The business acquisition includes the grant of license for Lynx Technology to the PacketVideo's market leading media technology, Twonky<tm>. Lynx Technology (www.lynxtechnology.com) will continue to develop the Twonky<tm> software for its customers around the world, including North America, Europe and Asia. Lynx Technology is based in San Diego, California and it has offices in Berlin, Germany; Tampere, Finland; and Basel, Switzerland.

SUUNTO
Finnish Suunto expanded its operations in Finland and opened a mobile competence center in Tampere. The mobile competence center is focusing on product development on iOS and Android platforms. Suunto's parent company, Amer Sports acquired the sports service company Sports Tracker, and a part of the Sports Tracker team is already located at Tampere.

TECNOTREE
Finnish Tecnotree, a global provider of Telecom IT solutions for the management of products, customers and revenue expanded its operations in Finland to Tampere with opening of a new Product Development Unit.

AIBER NETWORKS
Aiber Networks is building a high security data center to Tampere, Finland. Aiber networks offers high availability cloud platforms from its data centers to any business sector. It is 100% owned by its employees and the main investor Mr. Daniel Levin (Israeli citizen).

Sources: www.alstom.com, www.gegridsolutions.com, www.businesstampere.com www.patria.fi, www.ruag.com,www.kongsberg.com, www.u-blox.com, www.brontoskylift.com,www.morita119.com, www.coorsteksensors.com, www.suunto.com,www.tecnotree.com, www.aibernetworks.com