Konepalvelu Kuivalainen revs up its engine for growth

The vast halls at Ivontie, in Joensuu, are a notable landmark on national route 6. Signs for East MX, KTM, Husqvarna and GASGAS light tell riders on motorbikes and electric bicycles where the haven for wheels, spare parts and accessories is located. The Pro Truck Joensuu sign on the gate of that industrial complex indicates that the plot also includes repair and paint shop services for heavy goods vehicles. Konepalvelu Kuivalainen set up on Ivontie in 2018. The company has provided industrial services for nearly 21 years inside the gates of the John Deere plant.  

Sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes sideways, into success

Konepalvelu Kuivalainen Oy's Toni Kuivalainen and Aki Kuivalainen are not just entrepreneurs but also card-carrying motor heads. Two motocross bikes, both museum pieces, are displayed in the Ivontie office lobby. They are the winning bikes of famed motocross riders Jimi Laitinen and Santtu Tiainen.  

Motocross is the hobby of both Kuivalainen brothers – they ride as well as support the GASGAS team’s Finnish and European series riders. Toni has been driving since he was 5 years old, for 40 years. Aki took a 21-year break from riding, and getting back in the saddle is now for simple enjoyment.  

- Our team’s guys have done well in competitions both in Finland and around the world. We take the team truck is used around the races. That’s visibility and marketing. Networking. We are definitely well known in the motocross circles, says Aki Kuivalainen.

Appreciation for work

The Kuivalainen brothers have also done well with their business. At the end of the 1980s, Toni and Aki’s father, Hannu Kuivalainen asked Rauma Repola, a manufacturer of Lokomo forestry machines and cargo tractors, if their factory needed help in ploughing yards and moving goods. And they did. His first rolling stock purchase stock was a Valmet brand tractor with a Hiab crane.

Both Toni and Aki had gotten used to a work-oriented lifestyle by the time they went entered vocational school and the military service. At home in Hammaslahti, they had built and painted cars. The father and his boys were connected through their work. 

- Dad started out as a sole entrepreneur. He kept piling on more work, but he never hired any employees. The main goal was to involve us boys in entrepreneurship, explains Aki Kuivalainen.  

Aki had started working as a partner to their father under his own company as early as 1997. Toni joined a year later, which is when Konepalvelu Kuivalainen Ky was established. There was a company in Joensuu called Timberjack that built forestry machines. The brothers’ responsibilities included all sorts of ancillary work.

The father and sons’ hard work and skills were noticed. Along with forklift and transport services, painting forestry machines seemed to open the door for the next opportunity for growth. Hannu, the father, realised that the next generation of entrepreneurs needed to be involved in the contract negotiations.

At the same time, the company's future was being built with an expansion into an operations, surface treatment of steel structures in 2003, and into civil engineering contracts in 2004. They found partners in the region’s largest constructions companies. The company was turned into a limited liability company in 2004.

Strong growth

“Kesla, Palfinger and Rotator have found a trusted partner in Kuivalainen”.

Over the years, the one-man company has grown into a company that employs 60 people. Since 2018, the Ivontie premises have been expanded twice, in 2021 and 2024. The grounds are large enough for future expansions, too.

In 2023, the company made a profit of more than €400,000 with a turnover of about six million. Even 2019 did not shake Kuivalainen’s turnover all too much, when it sold its large-scale transport equipment in a transfer of ownership. 

- We thought we’d rather repair lorries than drive them. On the civil engineering side, we are focusing on fibre cable work. The idea is that in the summer, people can do the fibre work, and during the winter, they work on the Deere side on winter maintenance. We generally aim to have work for our people all year round, explains Toni Kuivalainen.

By Q3 of this year, the growth rate had climbed to 27 per cent. Of the business areas, industrial services – including the painting operation of Deere forestry machines and the Ivontie paint shop – and the heavy equipment repair shop are the most significant. 

In addition to painting Deere forest machines, Kuivalainen performs logistics and maintenance tasks for the forest machine plant. At the Ivontie machine repair shop, the largest customer group are timber drivers. Kesla, Palfinger and Rotator have found a trusted partner in Kuivalainen.

Motorcycles and electric bicycles are the latest inclusions to the service coverage. This spring, East MX set a sales record for electric bicycles.

- KTM Nordic offered us the official dealership for Eastern Finland. We saw electric bikes as a good thing for the future. The customers are individuals and companies who invest their employees’ health, says Aki Kuivalainen.

Attention on productivity

Over the past ten years alone, Kuivalainen Oy has made major moves and decisions – expansions, clarified strategy, new business opportunities, recruitments, and millions in investment. The brothers complete each other's sentences while talking about their employees’ skills, entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial freedom. It is obviously a great pleasure that both adult brothers work in a family company.

- In the past, the boys would have their naps in the cabins of all kinds of machines and lorries. I’d let them drive the moment their feet could reach the pedals. 

Both Aki and Toni have acquired vocational school diplomas. They have since, along with work, gone on to learn more about being a CEO and leadership in general, marketing, sales, as well as recruitment. 

- Our company has no external board members, but there’s always someone to spar with. There’s always someone looking over what us boys are up to, smirks Toni Kuivalainen.

One of Kuivalainen’s most important and long-term partners is Business Joensuu. The brothers name-drop business expert Veikko Tahvanainen as their trusted advisor. Among other things, he has played a key role in drawing up development and investment plans, finding funding options, all the way to funding applications themselves.  

- In general, Business Joensuu gives us so much new and useful information and channels, including training. Right now, what’s most important on agenda is to ensure productivity.