Meet the Tampere City Region: Pirkkala

– What’s Pirkkala best known for, Business Development Director Ahti Laakso?

Pirkkala is an attractive place to live and often praised for positive business thinking. We are contributing to an effortless experience in our business services: we concentrate on a company’s needs to ensure we can offer just what that company requires. This is rooted in a shared mindset in our municipality. Everyone understand that companies create jobs which helps generate tax revenues and offer services for the residents of Pirkkala.

– What are the major points for development in Pirkkala?

There are two main areas, logistics and aviation. Pirkkala is at a logistical junction in Finland, and there is a growing logistics industry hub here. Future traffic projects will make our accessibility by road even better. Then there are companies that have chosen Pirkkala mainly because of the Tampere-Pirkkala International Airport. Additionally, we aim to create an international centre for aviation training and development in Pirkkala within the AiRRhow alliance.

– What makes the Tampere City Region attractive in an international scale?

The entire Tampere Region has two major advantages: international and national accessibility as described above, and expertise. The new Tampere University and the vocational colleges in the region ensure availability of skilled labour. All levels of education are equally important, as the business environment in the region is diversified.

DHL Express opened a new terminal and office building in the Linnakallio area of Pirkkala in October 2019.

– Why did DHL Express choose Pirkkala, CEO Oktay Nuri?

Time is our main product: our customers use air express services because their documents or goods need urgent delivery. Location in the vicinity of the airport and excellent domestic connections are an obvious advantage of the area. Our new terminal provides pick up and delivery services for the Tampere Region and processes export and import deliveries of Central and Northern Finland.

Linnakallio area has the added bonus of environmentally friendly solutions, such as geothermal and solar energy, advanced building automation and LED lighting. This helps us to reach our emissions reduction target. We are aiming at a substantial improvement in our energy efficiency in the near future.

– What about the international scope of the Tampere City Region?

An item delivered from Pirkkala today will be at the destination in Europe tomorrow, usually before noon. This is an advantage to the Finnish export and import business, and we can contribute to the global growth of the companies in the Tampere Region.

Opening our new terminal coincides with the DHL 50th anniversary.  Our global network spans more than 220 countries, with several global hubs, the largest one Leipzig.

Novatron is a technology company and expert in digitalizing earthmoving. It develops and manufactures control systems for earthmoving machines.

– Why is Novatron located in Pirkkala, CEO Jukka Tervahauta?

The location near airport was one of the reasons why we chose Pirkkala. International sales have been part of our operations from day one, and from here we can easily visit our customers abroad. The digitalization process has been going strong in Finland, but in the future growth is increasingly achieved from international markets.

– What makes the Tampere City Region an attractive business environment?

There are highly-educated people available in the region, and we need them to ensure continuing expertise and growth. Novatron has also cooperated with the Tampere University in product development.

There are several big international companies in the Tampere Region. That opens opportunities for global cooperation and, on the other hand, provides the region with plenty of people who have international business experience.