Kohokohdat

History

In 1841, Captain Johan Fredrik Molander applied for permission to establish an ironworks at Haapakoski. His partner in founding the ironworks was Privy Councillor Johan Reinhold Holmberg. In 1842, the Senate granted Captain Molander the permission to establish the ironworks with the gracious approval of Emperor Nicholas I. In 1843, Johan Ernst August Boije became the third shareholder in the ironworks.

A little later, Captain Molander withdrew from the business. After Holmberg went bankrupt, the ironworks and its associated farms were sold to a merchant from St. Petersburg, who, in the same autumn (1857), sold the works to a Russian businessman, Nikolai Putilov. Putilov was a major manufacturer of rails, locomotives, and railcars for Russia’s expanding railway network and owned the Huutokoski, Haapakoski, and Oravi ironworks in Finland during the 1860s and 1870s. These ironworks produced raw materials for Putilov’s iron and steel foundries in St. Petersburg. During Putilov’s ownership in the 1870s, Haapakoski produced pig iron, which was rolled into railway tracks at the St. Petersburg factory.

The first blast furnace broke down and caused a large fire in August 1859. A new French-style blast furnace was built from gray stone in its place — only two of this type remain in Finland.

As lake iron became unprofitable, Haapakoski shifted to foundry and machine shop operations. Drain pipes from the Haapakoski foundry still run under the cities of Turku and Helsinki. During the war, grenades were manufactured there, and in the postwar years, the foundry produced industrial machinery and large valves.