Ever since the Savon Sellu mill was acquired by Powerflute in 2005 Pertti Kaasalainen, also sometimes called “Mr. Corrugated” by our clients, has been synonymous with our technical customer service. But Pertti’s troubleshooting history extends much further back as he already in 1990 stepped in to support FINNBOARD clients from his job at Metsä-Serla’s Neopac plant in Tampere. He gradually moved ever more into a technical customer service role and played an integral part in opening markets for the use of Kemiart’s coated liners and he played a big role in helping the US market grow to more than 100,000 tons p.a. for Kemiart in a few short years.
In the last few years, as he reached retirement age, Pertti worked on a part-time basis for Savon Sellu. This year Pertti turned 68 and informed us that he gradually would prefer the rocking chair over frequent flyer miles. We are very grateful for Pertti’s efforts on behalf of Savon Sellu and want to thank him for his invaluable support – truly a job well done!
Knowing that we could not rely on Pertti’s burning problem-solving interest for all eternity, we had been looking for a while for someone to step into Pertti’s large shoes. We now believe we have found a very good solution to this succession issue: Savon Sellu has entered into a contract with the consulting company Pro-Corr. Pro-Corr has been set up by Harre Medemblik; a highly experienced corrugated professional with close to 10 years of experience as Senior Process Specialist at BHS. Our contract with Pro-Corr commits us to use 2 weeks per month of Harre’s services for 11 months each year.
One aim of this new co-operation with Pro-Corr is to move our technical customer service offering from a reactive, problem solving approach towards a proactive, client service approach. We believe most of our clients will welcome a more regular support program and that regular plant visits by Harre will become a valuable and welcome resource. As a first step, we have started to work on a schedule of client calls for the rest of 2015. Many of you may already have been contacted by your Powerflute® sales representative about scheduling a first visit but please feel free to contact us if you would like to schedule one!