"In the countryside, only the eldest child could take over a family farm, so younger siblings had to find work elsewhere. At the same time, farmers had begun favoring lighter boxes made of corrugated board to transport their products, instead of the traditional wooden boxes. The village consensus was that the youth would do well to manufacture corrugated boxes," says Kristiinankaupunki Plant Manager Minna Hildén.
The name of the mill was a topic for serious consideration. The idea was to highlight the universal nature of the packaging products, so the words universal and förpackning ('package') were central themes during the brainstorming process. However, when put together, the words lead to a combination that seemed to be too long.
"The story goes that the discussion went on until some lady at a coffee party exclaimed that 'why can't the mill simply be called Uni-Pak?' That was the perfect name, and it's still what the mill is called to this day, among the local people when it's not simply referred to as the Tiukka mill," Hildén says.
As the decades have gone by, plenty of other things, other than boxes, have been manufactured at the Tiukka mill. In 1969, a sewing workshop called Uni-Cell was founded at the mill to provide work especially for the women of the village. The women would sew fibre cloth into things like airplane head rest protectors.
In 1985, the mill was bought by Enso-Gutzeit, and in 2001 it was made a part of Stora Enso's packaging division. The original 400 square metre plant floor has expanded to become an industrial area of approximately 9,000 square metres.
These days, the plant in Kristiinankaupunki is known for its multilingualism. Almost a fifth of the employees are other than Finnish nationals. Of the Finns, the majority are Swedish speakers, which is par for the course, considering the plant's location in Ostrobothnia.
Hildén says that Finnish, Swedish, and English are all spoken equally at the plant. Filipino or Estonian may also be heard sometimes when workers happen to find themselves paired with a compatriot.
The surroundings of the Kristiinankaupunki plant are idyllic. The mill is located on the riverside; on the opposite side of the river there are farmhouses from the 19th century. The city centre is eight kilometres away.
