A Vietnamese woman is breathing new life into the Finnish countryside, Helsingin Sanomat reports.
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Mobile grocer Matti Sallinen (L) is planning to transfer his business to Huynh Thi Kieu Oanh (R). Image: Heikki Haapalainen / Yle
While grocery chain Lidl operates in more than 30 countries, nowhere else is consumer sentiment as weak as it is here, country manager Conor Boyle told Kauppalehti.
Coffee-loving Finns can, however, take some comfort in Boyle’s prediction that coffee prices will drop in the coming months. He bases his view on the fact that recent coffee harvests have been strong.
Price pressures are easing, but they are still high. In March, coffee in Finland cost over 50 percent more than it did a year earlier.
Lidl is a challenger in Finland’s grocery market, KL explained, noting that Finland is firmly dominated by two major players: the S Group with nearly a 50 percent market share and K-retailers with just under 35 percent.
Big paper’s decline
For decades, Finland’s vast forests fuelled a booming export trade in paper and pulp, driving industrial growth. Today, the paper industry is continuing its steady decline, reports Maaseudun Tulevaisuus.
Finland’s Natural Resources Institute (Luke) forecasts that the country’s paper production and exports will decline by about three percent this year and even more next year, as demand weakens and production capacity is cut.
Average export prices are also expected to fall around three percent annually. Major producers like UPM and Sappi are closing paper machines in Lappeenranta and Lohja, resulting in a reduction of approximately 11 percent in Finland’s total paper capacity. Similar declines are seen elsewhere in Europe, compounded by American trade policies that divert more Asian paper to European markets.
In contrast, Finland’s cartonboard sector is looking brighter, with exports up nine percent in 2024 over the previous year.
Immigrant keeps Finnish rural tradition alive
In the quiet countryside of North Karelia, 87-year-old Matti Sallinen still drives one of Finland’s last two remaining mobile grocery trucks serving the region’s remote villages.
“Work hasn’t killed me, although I’ve done a lot of it,” Sallinen told Helsingin Sanomat.
HS reports that after more than 50 years behind the wheel, he is preparing to pass the keys of his beloved Metsämarket to Huynh Thi Kieu Oanh, or “Jenny,” a Vietnamese business student who recently moved to Finland.
Despite a language barrier — he only speaks Finnish, she Vietnamese and English — the two are united by a vision to keep this fading rural tradition alive. According to HS, this kind of work doesn’t seem to appeal to Finns anymore.