Viking Malt Group, the number one malting group in Northern Europe, announced today to build a new 85 000 tons malting house at a new site in Lahti, Finland. The group is for more than 130 years situated in Lahti and has also started there in 1934 it first malting operations which has today a capacity of about 80 000 tons. The company said it will spend about EUR 90 million (USD 107m) which makes the project one of the biggest investments in the country’s food and beverage industry in the past decade. Slated to commence operations in 2023, the new plant will enable Viking Malt to produce a variety of new products on top of the current selection.
With a combined yearly capacity of 600,000, Viking Malt in the 9th largest malting group in the world. The annual turnover of the group is approximately EUR 250 million (USD 297m) and the company has about 250 employees. Next to malthouses in Sweden (200,000t), Finland (80,000t) and Lithuania (80,000t), the company bought in 2016 Carlsberg’s malting division called Danish Malting Group (DMG) with one malthouse in Denmark (120,000t) and two malthouses in Poland (90,000t and 40,000t). The products of the group are predominantly sold in the Baltic Rim region but are also exported mainly via its export hub in Halmstad, Sweden, to customers all over the world.
Viking Malt Group is owned by the private Polttimo group (62,5 %) and Swedish agricultural cooperative Svenska Lantmännen (37,5 %).
Polttimo is an international group of companies, specializing in manufacturing raw materials and raw materials solutions for the food and beverage industry. The group creates grain-based solutions for its customers. Main product is malt for the brewing, craft brewing and distilling industry as well as cereal-based ingredients. Next to Viking Malt, the group owns Senson, a manufacturer of malt extracts and flours, cereal extracts, enzymes and many other innovative ingredients.
Polttimo was established in 1883 and is up to today a privately held family company owned by the Relander family (offspring of the founder, Ferdinand Frigren). In May 2013, Harald Relander’s son Pär-Gustaf Relander, representing the fifth generation of the family, took over as owner and Chairman of the Board for the company. In addition he is also chairman of Viking Malt.
CEO and Managing Director of Viking Malt is Kasper Madsen. Coming from Carlsberg, Madsen took over the job in 2017 from former managing director Antti Orkola who retired in 2018. Viking Malt’s new CFO is Teemu Pohjola who joined the group just two weeks ago.
