Siparila is a Finnish company, located in Vaajakoski, Central Finland. Siparila focuses on sustainable wooden buildings, with responsibility for environment and society and produces interior panel and outdoor cladding for both Finnish market and export. The raw materials come from PEFC/FSC certified Finnish forests (and imports larch from Siberia) and no harmful treatment agents, the end-matching of panels and claddings allows for flexible joint placement and thus reduces short cut-offs that cannot be used, all packaging are recycled, and they sell residues and by-products from the production cheap to avoid creating waste. The design is made of Finnish designers.
Although Siparila have a well-thought-out production and a focus on sustainability, they still have some challenges. https://www.siparila.fi
Siparila’s presentation: Siparila_presentation_RDI2CluB.pdf (3.3 MB) and contact person @pekka_i
Strengths
• One of the main strengths is their business model. Providing building materials, meanwhile collaborating with designers for the tailor-made solutions, and following circularity principles.
• Well established brand in their region, and partners and potential buyers find them fast
• Company is specialized in their working area – quality building materials.
• Differentiated services – provides materials with coating upon request that saves time for the customers.
• Collaboration with designers makes them be more visible in the new, innovative, and unique solutions, that makes them more recognizable.
• Their ability to produce design products from the wooden leftovers.
• Strong local network with collaboration partners, both suppliers and buyers.
• Experience in building projects for “smart villages” and “smart building”.
Weaknesses
• There are still non-biobased materials used in their production cycles – for coating and packaging.
• Collaboration networks in many, also very close ones (i.e. Baltic countries), markets are not established due to price level.
• Expanding business in various European markets are limited due to different conditions and requirements for timber production which are not easily customizable.
Opportunities
• To collaborate with partners to produce more biobased coatings (i.e. ALINA from Latvia) and packaging materials (i.e. from sawmill waste?)
• To expand their client networks over the Baltic Sea Region, as the Smart solutions for housing are more and more requested. Smart villages are built, smart, energy efficient housing is requested for educational institutions, day cares etc. public buildings.
• More and more clients are asking for companies to be sustainable, and SIPARILA still have a good potential to become more sustainable.
• Opportunities to collaborate with clusters, research institutes to develop more sustainable and innovative solutions.
• They have sawmill side products / waste that can be sold to others.
Threats
• Market is limited due to price level of the products and limited opportunities to customize production for different conditions and requirements.
• Demand for current side-production of pallets are decreasing
• Their biggest supplier is METSA group, which is large company, therefore it is a threat, as they might set their own conditions, or stop the collaboration.
Challenges and possible solutions
• The paintings used in the wooden panels are not sustainable or biobased 
A Latvian company which makes paint from clay was mentioned; https://alina-premium.com
• Bio-based packaging: the panel and cladding needs to be covered to avoid moisture, but is there any better ways of doing it than using plastics? The plastics used today are both recycled and recyclable, but a biobased packaging would be the best alternative. Several clusters are working with this for food packaging; https://packbridge.se, https://www.packagingcluster.com OR turning sawdust or any other by-products from the production into packaging
• Siparila faces some challenges to increase their export; wood is not a well-known construction material in many countries, so the skepticism about the material is partly great. Both improving the materials and increased information is needed.
Siparila has done a great job on sustainability, and there are a lot of opportunities for the company. More information on wooden buildings and constructions is needed, especially for the export market. The RDI2CluB network had some ideas for possible solutions on paintings and packaging, maybe other Biobord members have more ideas. Feel free to share your ideas! 
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