Finland's Hidex tops €15M revenue, invests millions in Turku expansion
What's the deal? HidexDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Finnish family-owned maker of scientific measurement instruments, reported revenue above €15 million last year, with profit topping €4 million. The Turku-based company opened new premises in August, a multimillion-euro investment aimed at supporting growth.
What does it do? Hidex designs and manufactures analysis tools for life-science research, radiation measurement, and isotope medicine. Products include liquid scintillation counters, gamma counters, and microplate readers; its best-seller is the liquid scintillation counter.
Why now? The company sells 350 to 400 devices a year, priced between €20,000 and €250,000. Chief executive officer Ville Haaslahti says radiation from nuclear waste must be monitored continuously. "We're talking about a perspective of hundreds of thousands of years. We'll have plenty to do going forward," he said (translated from Finnish).
The expansion: The new Turku facility in Kupittaa includes a laboratory for customer training sessions. "We are preparing for growth and for Hidex to be an attractive workplace for experts," Haaslahti said.
Who buys it? Exports account for 98% of sales, led by the US, China, Germany, France, and South Korea. Customers include some of the world's largest oil companies, pharmaceutical firms, top universities, nuclear operators, and regulators. Hidex has supplied instruments for an EU project connected to Chernobyl, and its work also touches Fukushima.
What's the endgame? Founded in 1993 by Haaslahti's parents, Jukka and Marja-Liisa Haaslahti, the firm employs about 50 people, mostly chemists, physicists, and engineers, with 15 in product development. Manufacturing runs through subcontractors in southwestern Finland, South Korea, Germany, and the UK, while quality control stays in-house.
Haaslahti sees a clear target: "If in five years we're near €30 million, that's a good performance."
The signal: Hidex illustrates how a specialised Finnish exporter can build a durable niche in radioactive-material analysis, where demand is tied to decades-long monitoring obligations. A rising growth area, Haaslahti notes, is measuring the bio-to-fossil ratio in biofuels — a sign of how the company is extending its core expertise into new markets.
Read more: kauppalehti.fi
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
