Yrjö Vesa

From State Metalworks to Valmet When Yrjö Vesa started as manager of Valtion Metallitehtaat, it was a miscellaneous group of small companies which had been collected together in 1946. The companies had produced military supplies during the wartime after which they had focused on war reparations. Management and administration of a such arrangement turned out to be problematic, and therefore the state put them under one company, Valmet Oy, which was founded at the end of 1950.

Vesa was involved at starting tractor and paper machine production; these divisions grew later successful lines of business.

The Valmet shipyards caused a lot of problems. During the war they had operated as repairs yards and for the war reparations they had built such ships which other yards had refused to produce. After the war reparations were paid off the yards did not have enough of orders. The government pressed Valmet to produce ships to Soviet Union with unprofitable prices due to employment reasons. The company board decided that the Helsinki yard must get enough of orders from Soviet Union even if they would not be profitable, or cover all the costs. Vesa stood against such business and subsequently he was removed from office in 1954.

After Valmet, Vesa worked for over ten years as manager for Teollisuuden Auto- ja vastuuvakuutus (Vehicle and Liability Insurance Company of Industry) in 1954–1965.