AHLSTRÖM
IN SOCIETY
Ahlström in Society is collective platform for the Ahlström family’s foundations and initiatives, honoring their legacy and contributions.Through our foundations and collaborations, we create a philanthropic network around our business aiming to play an active part in societal and cultural progress. We are pioneering a better tomorrow through our commitment to people, planet, and prosperity. Ahlström in Society is a collective platform for the Ahlström family’s foundations and initiatives, honoring their legacy and contributions.
Ahlström in Society is collective platform for the Ahlström family’s foundations and initiatives, honoring their legacy and contributions. Through our foundations and collaborations, we create a philanthropic network around our business aiming to play an active part in societal and cultural progress. Building on the legacy of ambition and responsibility, initiated by Antti and Eva Ahlström, we are pioneering a better tomorrow through our commitment to people, planet, and prosperity.
Noormarkku Club House celebrates its 100-year journey
The Club House was born a hundred years ago as a meeting place especially for the employees of the Ahlström’s Head Office, including officials and their families, as well as for various communities nearby. Over the past century, the house has been the venue for establishing associations, hosting weddings and funerals, hosting lively gatherings, and enjoying delicious meals.
Ahlström Collective Impact Continues to Support UNICEF’s Education Work
For the fifth consecutive year, Ahlström Collective Impact continues to support UNICEF’s global education work. Ahlström Collective Impact, a unique cooperation model bringing together the companies and foundations in the Ahlström network, continues to support UNICEF’s education work.
High Stakes – The life of Industrial titan Walter Ahlström
Sakari Siltala, PhD, has written an unvarnished biography of Walter Ahlström – one of our country’s most important industrialists. Walter Ahlström (1875-1931) served for decades as CEO of the Ahlström family company after his father Antti Ahlström, who created the family dynasty. The work has been commissioned by the Walter Ahlström Foundation.
Next in Mind - Scalling wellbeing for emerging adults in the Nordics
The Eva Ahlström Foundation is proud to be part of this great Next in Mind initiative to respond to the mental health challenges of emerging adults as a Nordic Collective!
Together, we can create a Nordic-wide revolution in mental well-being for emerging adults.
Ahlström Noormarkku has been owned by Ahlström since 1870, and is one of Finland’s largest historic industrial areas.
Ahlström Noormarkku offers a comfortable environment for those looking for accommodation, as well as an excellent setting for meetings and parties. The historic industrial area offers a wide range of activities, from museum exhibitions to canoe trips. The Noormarkku Club restaurant is a particular favourite among fans of local and wild food.
Ahlström’s unique historical industrial area is greatly valued. The Finnish Heritage Agency has included it in their listing of nationally significant built cultural heritage sites. A. Ahlström has been granted the Satakunta medal for its work in preserving and maintaining the culturally and historically significant Noormarkku ironwork areas. Ahlström has also received an industrial heritage prize from the Finnish Industrial Heritage Society for turning the Makkarakoski sawmill into a museum and for constructing the Ahlström Voyage exhibition in 2015.
Mairea Foundation arranges guided tours and is in charge of the collections and archives in the house.
The building and the interior was designed by Alvar and Aino Aalto and was completed in 1939. Maire Gullichsen founded Mairea Foundation in 1980. The aim of the foundation is to preserve the cultural values of Villa Mairea. Three employees work at the foundation.
Antti Ahlström purchased Noormarkku Works in 1870. Harry Gullichsen became the head of the company in early 1930’s after his father-in-law Walter Ahlström, who was Antti’s son. At the time Ahlström was one of the largest industrial companies in Finland. During three generations, the Ahlström family built three residential buildings in the Works area, Isotalo, Havulinna and Villa Mairea, and also a number of other buildings, such as the head office, Club and houses for the officials and workers. Industrial activity in the area has ended but the buildings like the old sawmill and forge remain. Noormarkku Works remains in the ownership of the Ahlström family.
The Eva Ahlström foundation is a family foundation that believes in action, collaboration and structural change.
The Eva Ahlström Foundation was founded in the spring of 2010 by a group of fifth-generation female heirs of Eva and Antti Ahlström, the nineteenth-century Finnish industrialist couple. When the Ahlström businesses expanded globally in modern times, family members talked about their desire to create a platform, in which the family could help the communities where the businesses’ operated. The platform became the Eva Ahlström foundation, our medium for continuing Eva and Antti’s legacy.
Today the foundation is proud to have worked with several inspirational organizations, each one unique and devoted to improving human well-being. Each project and organization has proven the complexity of societal issues, but also the power of concerted action for effecting change. Eva and Antti Ahlström focused on helping the most vulnerable through investing in health and education. The foundation continues this by investing in the wellbeing of the most vulnerable in the society, women and children, who according to studies are the ones most affected by poverty, war and natural disasters.
Each year, the Foundation awards scholarships to deserving young researchers in the fields of wood processing, electrical engineering, energy and metal industry.
Born in 1875, Walter Ahlström was the President of A. Ahlström Oy in 1907–1931, a time when the company’s operations were firmly rooted in the forest industry. Early on, Walter Ahlström understood how important it was to promote research and development in order to improve the competitiveness of Finnish industry. To support the further education of young engineers, in 1926, he established the Walter Ahlström Foundation.
Each year, the Foundation awards scholarships to deserving young researchers in the fields of wood processing, electrical engineering, energy and metal industry. To be eligible, applicants must hold an academic degree and be 35 or younger. In addition, an applicant must possess a Finnish personal identity code. In recent years, the Foundation has mainly provided incentive grants to support those working on their doctoral theses. With financial support from the Foundation, researchers can travel to international research conferences and visit international research institutions. The Foundation also takes part in the Researchers Abroad programme.
The Lebell’s Merchant woodhouse
with interiors from the 18th and 19th century.
In the atmospheric Lebell’s Merchant House museum the visitor can get acquainted with interiors from the 18th and 19th century, and with an important part in the history of Kristinestad. Some original details of the interiors have survived, and together with the furniture and the utensils and decorative items they create an authentic ambiance in the museum.
The Lebell’s Merchant House is situated in the unique woodhouse milieu of Kristinestad, and it demonstrates how a merchant family lived in a maritime city over 200 years ago. The courtyard is surrounded by outbuildings, one of them a rare example of a salt magazine preserved from the glory days of seafaring. The first merchant house was constructed in the 1720s by Casper Lebell (originally second lieutenant Casimir Subkowski/Kazimierz Zubkowski, born in Grodno, Poland), a Polish war prisoner, who was released and granted the right to trade in Kristinestad. The family’s prestige and wealth increased along with their son, Casper Lebell junior. He became a respected merchant and created a fortune by exporting tar and timber and importing salt. Casper Lebell junior had the current house built in 1762. The house was inhabited by three generations of Lebells and two generations of Holmströms, who married into the family, until the house was devolved into other hands. The Lebell Merchant House has functioned as a museum since 1939. Eva Ahlström was a descendant of the Lebell family, and her daughter bought the house and founded a museum.
Ahlström Collective Impact is a unique cooperation model that brings together the Ahlström Network partners.
Ahlström Collective Impact (ACI) unites public and private companies, foundations, shareholders, and employees to act together with UNICEF Finland to support the realization of selected United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). During the past years ACI has focused on SDG 4,5 and 17 and the joint investments have been directed to UNICEF’s global education program.
Born from a strong heritage, ACI was founded as a global network of interconnected resources with a strong commitment to resolving most pressing social issues.
“Ahlström Collective Impact is very much a continuation of the values and beliefs held by my great-great-grandparents Antti and Eva Ahlström, who 170 years ago passionately argued that an investment in an equal education for girls and boys is the basis for a stable society, a prosperous business as well as the key to a sustainable future. We are now supporting these topics on a global level through cooperation with UNICEF ”, says Maria Ahlström-Bondestam, former Chair of Ahlström Collective Impact.
UNICEF’s Global Education Program provides support for millions of children who need to continue to learn, grow and develop the skills necessary to thrive in life. By bringing together the companies and foundations in the Ahlström network, the initiative can have a bigger impact than the partners could have alone. This unique collaboration also gives the network the possibility to quickly act and support UNICEF in global crisis.
