“Reliable, flexible and easy to approach” Project manager Raimo Brand and Sales Manager Mikko Takaniemi from Metso both describes Katsa with one mouth.

Co-operation between Metso and Katsa Oy dates to the 80’s when Metso first sought a reliable and protean partner for their changing needs in order to develop power transmissions in their machines.

“Back then, we lived in a totally different world and geographically close location played an important role in partner selection. Of course, Katsa´s good reputation and our connections with them weighed a lot as well” says Raimo Brand who has worked in Metso as a project manager for 18 years.

Oy Lokomo Ab, which later became part of Metso, started its operations in Tampere, Finland, by producing steam-powered locomotives over a hundred years ago. Today, Metso’s unit in Tampere is one of their key competence centers, specializing e.g. in the development and assembly of industry-leading Lokotrack® mobile crushing plants. Until this day, more than 7,000 mobile Lokotrack plants have been delivered around the world. Metso’s business in aggregates includes equipment, service and support, as well as spare and wear parts.

Co-operation between Metso and Katsa has continued uninterrupted since the 1980s. During these decades, many different, such as horizontal and vertical gearboxes has been sketched and pre-designed together by these two productive partners.  Katsa has been naturally responsible for the final design and manufacturing of the gearboxes. Like in every partnership, also in this one, there has been a wide range of time periods. Collaboration has not always been as good and flexible as it is today. “But there are always two parties in every relationship, and everyone should look in the mirror if not everything goes according to your wishes” says project manager Brand. “Good collaboration always depends on the relationship between persons and each individual” Takaniemi continues.

“In the 2010s, we were able to regain the model of doing things genuinely together, when we launched a whole new development project for our gearboxes. Back then, Metso had the need to upgrade their transmissions and simplify the supply collection by reducing titles in order to increase profitability but also to develop more fuel efficient, gearbox-driven crushers. There was no such product at that time” tells Takaniemi.” Although the first initiative came from Metso, Katsa has always been very keen to go along with the development projects and meet the challenges, which we value very much” Takaniemi explains. The purchase process during that project was very open and both parties got into a tight situation because we needed to make a huge change. Katsa had to abandon some of the old traditions in gearbox designing and manufacturing in order to evolve and develop something totally new. But they were ready to deploy, which benefited themselves as well. During the project we met frequently, and things were done closely together which also affected positively into our collaboration and it helped us to raise our relationship into a whole new level than it had been” tells both Takaniemi and Brand.

“Exceptional situations require exceptional actions” says Raimo Brand while describing the cooperation between Metso and Katsa. “And exceptional people” complements Takaniemi. “The fact that we have truly been able to help each other, has deepened our collaboration.”

When asked how you would describe your collaboration with Katsa, Mikko Takaniemi sums up: “Flexibility, ability to customize, understanding the customer needs and both technically and in quality, Katsa´s gearbox is excellent, and the product is perfectly suitable for crushing usage. In addition to that Katsa´s after sales abilities and service in that division is great. The fact that we were already familiar with the techniques in Katsa´s gearbox and the experience of our partnership have significantly added value for us. When something is agreed, it will happen. Mutually. That is how I describe genuine partnership” finishes Takaniemi.

“Entity” says Raimo Brand in turn. It´s not about cost savings or profitability alone here, even though they do matter. “This is such a person dependent affair, and everything is based on open and confidential interaction in person relations” Brand continues.  “I have always been able to be in contact with Katsa´s personnel and got help from them no matter what issue there has been.  Nonpersonal emails are not the right way to handle customer relationships” finishes Brand.

“Yes, we can definitely recommend Katsa´s as a business partner” ends both gentlemen.