Amid the upheaval of the European automotive industry, Valmet Automotive is leveraging its unique engineering and manufacturing capabilities to expand beyond car assembly. Together with VTT, the company has crystallised a strategy for a new business, opening doors to new industry verticals beyond automotive, like defence and high-tech manufacturing.
Key facts
Valmet Automotive needed help in navigating market uncertainty and identifying the business potential within serial manufacturing beyond the automotive business.
VTT delivered a foresight-driven business transformation project combining market analysis with manufacturing expertise to create a concrete strategic roadmap.
Valmet Automotive has a clear runway for its Industrial Solutions business area, a validated business model, market definition and a concrete sales pipeline for cross-industry expansion.
Valmet Automotive, founded in 1968 and headquartered in Uusikaupunki, Finland, is a company focused on contract manufacturing of cars and other industrial products. Valmet Automotive is one of the leading vehicle contract manufacturers in the world and one of the largest European manufacturers of convertible roof and kinematic systems, including electric vehicle charging flaps and active spoilers. The company offers its decades of expertise in serial production also beyond the automotive industry, for example, to the defence sector.
Adapting to an industry in transition
The European automotive sector is currently undergoing significant structural changes and disruptions. From the rapid transition to electric powertrains to intensifying global competition and volatile supply chains, the operating environment for contract manufacturers has become increasingly cyclical and challenging.
To ensure long-term profitability and growth, traditional players must look beyond the automotive vertical and find ways to adapt to the changing environment while harnessing their competitiveness.
Identifying the potential of core capabilities
For Valmet Automotive, the question was not just about maintaining its status as a top-tier vehicle manufacturer, but how to evolve and diversify revenue streams in a shifting landscape. The group’s manufacturing technology unit spearheading Industrial Solutions, possesses unique engineering and manufacturing implementation capabilities, and a business potential that remained largely untapped outside the automotive sphere.
“The challenge we set out to tackle with VTT was about commercialising manufacturing capabilities for other sectors, what and where the market potential is, and what kind of offering would best fit the market,” explains Sami Lindén, Vice President, Technologies at Valmet Automotive.
The company wanted to understand if their world-class expertise could be packaged to solve broader productivity challenges in the Nordic countries, Europe or beyond. Lindén adds that VTT provided a vital outside-in perspective to sharpen Valmet automotive’s internal goals.
Mapping the path to diversification
During the project, VTT helped Valmet Automotive with:
Market definition and foresight work for achieving the company’s full business potential
Matching Valmet Automotive’s capabilities with a market and business model
Providing recommendations for strategic and tactical actions to drive business expansion.
VTT stepped in to help Valmet Automotive navigate this uncertainty by matching the company's skills and capabilities – sharpened by the automotive industry’s high standards – with emerging market needs. The collaboration wasn't just about analysing market trends; it was a deep dive into business and value creation logic.
“The expertise we provided for this project at VTT is in strategic foresight, subject matter expertise in business and manufacturing, and decision support,” says Arho Suominen, Research Professor at VTT. “We aimed to understand the structural changes in the operating environment and integrate our expertise to deliver an actionable transformation roadmap.”
By utilising broad data access to deliver market and business insights, VTT defined the addressable and serviceable market for Valmet Automotive’s expertise with the desired business model. Jyri Rökman, Senior Solution Scientist at VTT, notes: “The main strategic change is that, within this business area-to-be, Valmet Automotive is diversifying from solely automotive vertical to being able to horizontally serve the market in the development, improvement and modernisation of manufacturing assets across industries.”
This work and VTT's view of the business environment brought concreteness to the strategy.
A roadmap for growth
The project resulted in much more than a report; through a collaborative approach, VTT supported Valmet Automotive with a shift in mindset and clarity for operational and strategic decision-making.
“This work and VTT's view of the business environment brought concreteness to the strategy. As a result, we were presented with a roadmap, including a market area analysis with potential companies with whom to build our sales pipeline,” Lindén says.
The project also crystallised the internal organisation and future development of the Industrial Solutions unit, requiring specific choices regarding staff, resources and prioritisation.
“I think it’s crucial that the work actually led to concrete actions and a business case for the company. Strategic foresight projects often only deliver a ‘nice to know’ scenario, but we worked to present concrete recommendations for what they should do and what actions to take,” Suominen notes.
VTT truly wanted to get to know our work, strategy, service offering and unique competing factors to really understand what we were talking about.
A partnership built on trust and flexibility
With a strategic transformation underway, the success of the collaboration was rooted in a highly collaborative and transparent process. Both organisations emphasise the importance of mutual understanding and the ability to address complex strategic questions openly.
“The collaboration with VTT was flexible and smooth on both sides. They truly wanted to get to know our work, strategy, service offering and unique competing factors to really understand what we were talking about,” Lindén says. This sentiment is echoed by both VTT experts, noting that the trusting relationship allowed for direct dialogue on even the most difficult topics, ensuring the final execution roadmap was both realistic and ambitious.
“Seeing is believing. Having seen the Valmet Automotive car plant with the guidance of their experts during the project, their pragmatic yet innovative and agile approach to rigorous continuous improvement made us truly understand their engineering and execution capabilities – and the value add and business potential beyond the Uusikaupunki plant,” Rökman sums up.
