🇫🇮 New leading company projects invite SMEs to join in increasing their competitive advantage
Two new leading company (veturi in Finnish) projects will be launched with Business Finland funding: ABB’s H2 Springboard and Nokian Tyres’ FUTUREPROOF. More selections will be made in March 2025. The leading company projects offer collaboration opportunities for SMEs and research organizations to solve future challenges.
“The new leading company ecosystems will help to significantly increase the value added to Finland from the hydrogen economy and sustainable solutions, including through high-skilled machinery and equipment manufacturing and digitalization. Both leading companies create conditions for future investments in Finland by the manufacturing and energy sectors,” says Kari Komulainen, Senior Director at Business Finland.
“In the public debate, companies are being asked to take more risks and grow to address weak productivity development. Wise owners look far into the future and understand that investing in R&D creates new knowledge-based competitive advantage and exports,” says Mr Komulainen.
Business Finland has granted €20 million R&D funding for both leading company projects. In addition, Business Finland is committed to funding future projects of the leading company´s partners with up to €50 million per ecosystem.
ABB’s H2 Springboard to boost developing competitive solutions for the Finnish hydrogen economy
The 5-year H2 Springboard program, led by ABB, aims to bring together more than 50 Finnish companies, research institutes and universities to boost the Finnish hydrogen economy.
“The aim is to link the industrial investment and pilot projects of ecosystem partners to agile solution development and research. This will shorten the time to industrial deployment of innovations and accelerate the scaling of the hydrogen economy in Finland,” says Pekka Tiitinen, Managing Director of ABB Oy.
ABB aims to develop electrification and automation solutions for the operation and control of hydrogen plants and plants using hydrogen, and for connecting them to the grids. It will also develop sub-systems and technologies to support the management of the electricity and hydrogen network and energy storage. In collaboration with ecosystem partners, solutions will be developed covering the entire hydrogen value chain. These solutions can be applied not only to hydrogen plants, but also to port electrification and energy management.
The R&D investments in the program of ABB and its ecosystem partners are estimated to exceed €150 million.
Read more on the H2 Springboard webpage
Nokian Tyres aims to futureproof mobility
Nokian Tyres is leading the FUTUREPROOF program to confront the key challenges of future mobility through solutions related to for example the digitalization of tires and traffic, product lifecycle and manufacturing technologies. The program’s mission is futureproofing resilient European on- and off-road mobility by crosslinking industries to join the common cause.
“The program aims to respond to challenges such as climate change and increasing vulnerability of the global value chains with innovations across business, process, and technical domains. It drives growth for both Nokian Tyres and the ecosystem partners while creating concrete benefits for drivers,” says Paolo Pompei, Nokian Tyres President and CEO.
The ecosystem is aiming to involve over 100 partners. The expenditure on the research, development and innovation work of Nokian Tyres and the ecosystem combined is estimated to increase significantly during the program, and it is estimated to create hundreds of new jobs in Finland by 2034.
Read the Nokian Tyres press release
Leading companies commit to increasing their R&D investments in Finland and building an ecosystem
In the challenge competition, companies define for themselves the ambitious mission they aim to achieve with their project. What is special about the challenge competition is that companies commit to a significant increase in their R&D activities in Finland. Another special feature of the leading company funding is its broad spill-over effects: In their competition proposals, leading companies commit to creating significant collaboration with research organizations and SMEs. So far, more than 800 R&D projects from other companies and research organizations have been initiated in the leading companies’ ecosystems.
“Our leading company activities has proven to be an excellent tool for leveraging private R&D financing. The outcome of the previous challenge competitions from 2020-2023 is already over 2 billion euros in additional R&D contributions from the 24 winning companies,” summarizes Kari Komulainen.
An example of results: ExpandFibre
One of the concluded leading company projects is ExpandFibre, jointly led by Metsä Group and Fortum from 2020 to 2024. The ExpandFibre innovation ecosystem included over 100 organizational members and more than 30 publicly funded projects, which accelerated the development of new bioproducts. The combined volume of research was over 140 million euros. Metsä Group significantly increased its R&D contributions during the four-year project. The development work done is expected to yield several commercial solutions over a 5 to 10-year period and has already led to pre-feasibility studies and preliminary planning for potential factory investments in Finland. Read more about Expand Fibre
Business Finland has been seeking leading companies through challenge competitions since 2020. The next competition starts in the spring of 2025. Competition proposals are expected to solve significant future challenges and have a substantial impact on the government’s 4% R&D target. Business Finland’s funding for the leading company is 10 or 20 million euros. In addition, partners of the leading company can apply for funding for their own R&D projects.
Explore the funding for leading companies and their ecosystems
More information
Business Finland
Kari Komulainen
Senior Director
kari.komulainen (at) businessfinland.fi
+358 50 5577 842
ABB
Satu Perälampi
Country Communications Manager
satu.peralampi (at) fi.abb.com
+358 10 222 3850
Nokian Tyres
Teemu Soini
VP, Innovation and Development
Futureproof (at) nokiantyres.com
+358 44 291 6335
Originally published on 3 March by Business Finland.
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