Our story
Nordic forests are home for many precious substances. Crude tall oil, familiarly called CTO, is one of them. A natural co-product of the kraft pulp industry, CTO is high-value biomass that already the Vikings used as coating in their boats hundreds of years ago.
In our CTO refinery in Rauma, Finland, we continue the tradition and upgrade, refine and test CTO for its numerous modern-day purposes. As a forerunner in CTO research and development, Forchem has created CTO-based products to, for example to replace antibiotics in animal feed. The potential for other domains, too, is tremendous: CTO’s antibacterial qualities can be used as a part of new packaging solutions and could revolutionise the pharmaceutical industry. We believe there is still much more to discover.
Next to these new innovations, CTO is a sustainable alternative for non-renewable ingredients in many products that serve us in our daily life. Paints, inks, adhesives, glues, lubricants, lipstick – all these can be enriched with bio-based CTO products.
Forchem builds on the same values as the Finnish society: sustainability, reliability, respect and trust. Surrounded by our source of inspiration, Nordic pine forest, we make intelligent, innovative and sustainable use of natural resources and create solutions for a greener tomorrow.
Our team
We value open and honest atmosphere at work – interaction within Forchem is based on trust and respect. We want to enable our employees to develop to their fullest potential. We are experts in our own fields, and we work in teams bringing together our skills and improving the efficiency of our work. This enables us to achieve the challenging goals that we have set for ourselves and respond to the requirements of change.
Occupational safety
We have ambitiously set “Zero-Accidents” as our starting point in occupational safety. By the end of the year 2019 we have worked 881 days without accidents. The personnel, who have been committed to this goal from the start, are the ones to thank for this.
Occupational safety issues are regularly discussed in production meetings. The employees have taken the initiative in making suggestions to correct or improve occupational safety matters. They are encouraged to report the near-miss situations. All near-miss situations are analysed and either structural or functional changes are made to prevent the same close call from happening again.
Our aim is to continue along this safe path we are on and achieve even better results. We believe that occupational safety reflects our business. We also like to be an example to others: zero accidents – it is possible!
We invest in wellbeing and healthcare of our employees so that everyone can feel they enjoy working and can give their fullest at work as well as develop their potential.
Wellbeing
We invest in wellbeing and healthcare of our employees so that everyone can feel they enjoy working and can give their fullest at work as well as develop their potential. We see the wellbeing being crucial part of ensuring the long-term goals and customer service – a happy and committed team makes success.
To ensure this we like offer to our employee collective activities varying from sport event to sauna evenings to taking good care of ergonomics. We survey health and wellbeing issues regularly and offer all employees the possibility to measure their physical fitness regularly. The results can be seen in low absence from work and in work atmosphere.