This Finnish company is just over 50 years old yet but its influence has spread far and wide with patented inventions giving the company a competitive advantage.

In its short lifetime, Hydrovoima Oy has helped bakeries from different countries to increase their productivity and to improve the quality of the end products.
The company was established in 1958 by two innovative men - Antero Suominen and Reino Laitinen who were famed for their ability to create new ideas. Among other things they won the second price in the International Inventors' Exhibition in Brussels in 1960. The innovation was a hydraulic piston without cam shaft. It is used today for instance in paper machines.

One of the biggest bakeries in the region contacted these two men in the early 60s with the challenge to automate rye dough as sales of rye bread had soared, and there were just not enough bakers to make bread by hand.
This marked the start of mechanisation in Finnish bakeries.
Now, under the leadership of current managing director Pekka Leppäniemi, Hydrovoima offers ‘truly original ideas' and provides solutions to enhance productivity without breaking the bank.
It now offers bread and roll lines, pizza lines, flat bread lines, thin bread lines, pastry lines, pie lines and short dough lines.
Specialised equipment includes the VE Dough Sheeter which has the patented Hydrovoima spreading roller system at its soul which handles the dough so gently, that all stress is released and shrink back problems do not exist.
Another patented option for the dough sheeter is the feeding roller unit, which makes sure that the dough is fed stage-by-stage in a non-pressing, natural way. The Hydrovoima guillotine leaves the product undamaged after cutting.
The Hydrovoima Soft Sheeter Junior 600 is a new generation sheeting machine and new doughs and even rye dough can now be sheeted and handled tension free.
The machine offers good tension-free results, even on extra thin doughs, under 1mm.
A Soft Sheeter Junior is extra versatile in that end products can be all kinds of breads, rolls, loaves, baguettes and different thin bread types, pizza bases, pitas, and the like.
The VE Dough Sheeter is the soul of the lines produced by Hydrovoima. They come in three versions making a uniform dough band of 600, 900 or 1100mm wide.
The dough is treated by seven different systems, yet the sheeter is only 2.5 metres long.
The Hydrovoima dough sheeting method is extremely gentle to the dough, and releases stress effectively.
The sheeting method is patented in most European countries and in the United States.
All of this is light years away from the orginal rye dough machine, the Kantti, which was produced in big volume.
New innovative ideas kept coming every year from the company Hydrovoima.
In the 70s, there were more than 150 different original designs for bakery equipment, from crate washing machines to fat fryers.
What makes a company unique?
Well, the management believes that, ultimately, companies are ranked by their capacity to produce truly original ideas, designs and manufacturing solutions. Solutions that add something special.
Hydrovoima's original ideas are patented.
Everything is designed and fitted, tailor-made to customer requirements, using standard and proven Hydrovoima module constructions.
Hydrovoima has a broad network of distributors who offer full service with marketing, sales, installation, back-up and spare parts.
They are based in France, Norway, the UK and Ireland, Israel, Canada and the United States, Australia, Russia and India.
Hydrovoima's growth strategy is based on expanding its market area and on exports in its own special areas of expertise.
Exports currently account for 60 per cent of the company's sales.