Vendia Woods Oy – wooden boatbuilding in the 21st century
Vendia for sustainable boating
Vendia Woods manufactures building materials for sustainable boat building. Our goal is to replace both rainforest timber and fiberglass with locally certified northern pine. The professional construction of wooden boats requires profitability. Vendia supports the profitability of professionals by developing materials for boat building that are easy to store (how to transport and store vendia) and to work with (how vendia behaves when worked with). Vendia saves both machine investment and labour time.
About us
Vendia Woods Oy bought the original Vendia production line in Rautalampi in autumn 2021, and the production of our marine grade plywood started in December 2021 in Luopioinen, Pälkäne. The company is located in the middle of old Finnish forests, which provide the raw material (link to wood story) for the Vendia products. The 24 owners of Vendia Woods Oy are local forest owners and international business professionals.
The company's Board of Directors in 2024: Matti Ahvenharju, Dr. Leena Ilmola-Sheppard, Seppo Köngäs, Juha Lamminkari and Veliville Vihtonen.
Continuous development (philosophy)
The company manufactures marine plywood, CNC machined interior panels, construction kits for boats and canoes. Vendia is also the Finnish Sales and Service partner for high quality “Kräutler electric boat motors”.
In its first year of operation in 2022, a fifth of Vendia's turnover was exported, and last year it exported more than 40%. "We stand out in the world because we make wood an attractive and profitable boatbuilding material. Each tree is selected by a Vendia boat builder, who supervises the veneering process and chooses the materials used in Vendia. Quality craftsmanship, in other words. But that's not enough. We need to develop new materials that are more ecological than solid wood. Our owners invest an annual sum equivalent to about a third of the company's turnover in the development of production and new materials," says Leena Ilmola-Sheppard, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Venda.
The team behind Vendia Woods
Jouka Dehm
Sales and Marketing Manager
Jouka Dehm is a trained master boat builder who speaks fluently German, English and Finnish.
“The most important thing is to find a pine tree that is over 120 years old, with a trunk that is free of branches and blemishes, grown in a mixed forest. A tree of this value must be carefully exploited and processed with uttermost care," says Jouka Dehm.
Juha Sumanen
Production Manager
Juha Sumanen is a forest owner and has worked as a forester.
The Vendia board is made by hand, which increases production costs, but at the same time we can tailor the product to each application, says Juha Sumanen.
Leena Ilmola-Sheppard
Managing Director
Leena Ilmola is an experienced company founder and international marketing professional. "I lost my heart to the first heritage boat being locally built from Vendia. But nostalgia does not solve the profitability of boatbuilding. We need to develop new solutions for modern boatbuilding," says Leena Ilmola, PhD in business strategy.