Teknos Solarizes its Coating Manufacturing Facility

Finnish-based coating manufacturer Teknos has installed solar panels in its paint production factory in Rajamäki, Finland. Using solar power is one of the company’s actions to decrease the usage of fossil fuels and to combat climate change.

Besides switching to renewable energy sources, the company’s goal is to decrease energy consumption overall in all of its sites. Teknos recently received EcoVadis Gold medal for its sustainability efforts.  

“Sustainability has always played a very crucial role in Teknos' strategy and, therefore, installation of the solar panels was an important and tangible action for us to do,” says Petri Holm, Operations Manager in Rajamäki. 

In Rajamäki, Teknos produces powder coatings and waterborne liquid coatings. The usage of the new solar panels will cover up to 2% of the energy usage for the whole factory.

This means that the majority of the factory’s cooling processes can be run with solar energy. The 2% annual electricity savings at the factory are comparable with the annual consumption of energy of about ten electricity heated single-family homes.

The rooftop of the Rajamäki factory was renovated for the solar panels during the turn of the year of 2022. Now there lies almost 600 powerful solar panels on the roof, which each year cover a total capacity of 210kW and produce 180MWh renewable domestic energy for the direct usage of the factory. 

The solar panel installation is also a action in the voluntary Energy Efficiency Agreement initiative in Finland, which Teknos takes part in. The aim of the agreement is to challenge all the participating companies to make thousands of energy efficiency actions per year.

The techno-economic lifecycle of the panels is around 35 years, during which the panels can lower up to 15,000 kilograms of CO2 emissions each year.

This amount corresponds to the emissions of 100,000 km usage of car. In the future, Teknos will keep on planning and implementing new strategies for energy savings. Similar solar panel installations will become topical when there will be new extensions or other factory projects occurring.