Finnish interior construction leader Maler Oy to establish a production facility in Lithuania

Maler Oy, a Finnish manufacturer of interior design and construction elements, has announced plans to establish its subsidiary company Maler Ltd in Lithuania. The company will build a production facility in Kėdainiai. The new state-of-the-art factory will use highly-automated production methods to manufacture painted medium-density fiberboard (MDF) moulding and panel production.

Established in 1989, Maler Oy is a family-owned company that produces interior products for both dry and wet indoor spaces. Made of wood or wood fibre boards, the company’s interior panels and mouldings offer a solution for completing indoor surfaces. Maler Oy’s main markets are in Northern-Central Europe, including the Nordics and the Baltics.

The company’s new facility in Kėdainiai will produce painted medium-density fiberboards, including mouldings and panels, with the production of foiled products also in the plans. The new manufacturing capacity will help Maler Oy provide better service to customers throughout Europe.

During the site selection process, Maler Oy considered the location’s business environment, transparency, distance to raw material sources and end customers, as well as the availability of technically trained staff. The company compared locations in the Baltics and Poland.

Maler Ltd will set up operations in the Kėdainiai Free Economic Zone (FEZ) , a ready-to-build industrial site. The company will be looking for industrial planning, painting, and machinery maintenance specialists, as well as sales and back-office employees, to join its team in Kėdainiai.

With sustainability an important priority for Maler Oy, the company also follows environmentally friendly production processes, from sourcing wood from sustainably managed forests to using water-soluble paints, lacquers, and varnishes. Maler Oy also seeks to bring the best automotive manufacturing practices into the woodworking industry. The company continuously invests in the latest technology and process automation and is developing joint R&D programs with higher education institutions. Recently, the company has been experimenting with artificial neural networks – a method in artificial intelligence that teaches computers to process data in a manner that is modelled after the human brain.

“Maler Oy shares its know-how in robotics and artificial intelligence with universities in Finland, and we are planning to do the same in Lithuania. Maler Ltd would like to establish a working relationship with Lithuanian technical schools and universities,” says Mr Okker.

Elijus Čivilis, General Manager at Invest Lithuania, says that Maler Oy’s investment in Kėdainiai shows that Lithuania’s regions are great sites for smart, highly-automated production.

“Regional FEZs in Lithuania offer excellent logistics, well-developed infrastructure, and local, highly-educated talent. This makes them particularly attractive locations for modern manufacturers.”