Kokkola Industrial Park (KIP) is Northern Europe’s largest concentration of inorganic chemical industry. Cobalt and zinc production is among the largest in the world. There are 16 industrial companies and over 60 service companies in the Park. Decades after the recession in the 1990s, Kokkola and Central Ostrobothnia have risen among Finland’s most prosperous areas, both in terms of employment, exports, and growth.
Kokkola’s greatest success factor is ultra-modern port located in the Ykspihlaja, which enables the city to engage in a heavy export industry. The Port is the biggest cargo port, the biggest transit port, the biggest rail traffic port and the third biggest general port in Finland. Through the Port of Kokkola (link) passes in total around eight million tons of cargo per year: one-third of the Port’s exports comes from the Industrial Park, one third from the transit traffic from Russia and one third from the containers and parceled goods. The port is located in the immediate vicinity of the Industrial Park.
Kokkola Industrial Park has a complete infrastructure and functional, versatile service delivery. There are technical, material, environmental, health, safety, quality, management, laboratory, and fire safety services accessible in the area. There are also plenty of different commodities available for industrial needs.
During the decades, companies operating in KIP’s area has developed strong synergies at many levels, such as utilization of process industry’s side streams, centralized service production and the joint development of business culture, especially around EHSQ.
Park infrastructure’s strengths are energy and other commodities supply which is almost self-sufficient, integrated port operations, and other key logistical forms.
Availability of diverse raw materials and energy is one of KIP’s most important success factors!
Kokkola’s chemical industry is the world’s best in its field and profound specialization is often required for product development and production management tasks. The City of Kokkola and the region of Central Ostrobothnia have consistently sought to improve training in the chemical industry, the process industry, and the mining sector and to support RDI activities in these areas.
Typical in chemical industry’s industrial areas is that by-products from one factory can be used as raw materials for another plant. In addition, electricity, district heat, and steam are generated, which are exploited both inside and outside the industrial area. Industrial companies in the Industrial Park live in industrial symbiosis, where “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. The efficient circular economy is practiced in the area for decades, thus, it is not about a trend phenomenon.