Innovations – 80 Years of Courageous Pioneering

For the past 80 years we have survived and thrived thanks to persistent innovating and continuous development at TT Gaskets. In the 1940s our customers’ needs were urgent and resources scarce, due to the dire wartime circumstances during that period. We are unfortunately facing similar circumstances again in Europe and are forced to operate accordingly in a changing world. But as we have tackled such situations in the past, we can do it again in the present.

Resource scarcity in the worst form

During those years of war and uncertainty, our early innovations stemmed from resource scarcity as we couldn’t procure materials from the outside world – we had to use locally available materials. For example, we did a disservice to the Finnish movie industry by melting hundreds of rolls of film to produce gasket material from the cellulose nitrate they contained.

Standing out from the mass

I believe that the hardships gave birth to the idea of expanding our horizons from local resources, which truly came to life in the following decades. We were pioneers in the still very much introverted Finland by fearlessly entering global trade in the 1960s and expanding our exports heavily in the 1970s and especially 1980s.

Some of our still-ongoing global partnerships started in the 1960s. During that time, it wasn’t uncommon for Finnish companies to abstain from foreign trade and outright decline offers that came from abroad.

Trial and error lead to success

We have always been open for new technologies and implementing them. For instance, in the 1980s waterjet cutting was an emerging technology that was doubted by many, but not us.

As was the case with global trade, we were pioneers in waterjet cutting as well. It took time before it replaced traditional punching and die cutting of gaskets, but nowadays waterjet cutting is one of our key production methods. Manual punching and die cutting are slowly being phased out thanks to investments in knife cutting and traveling head die cutting.

Ideas leaning towards the future

These success stories are examples of the gradual development we achieve by courageous trial and error, and the story continues with accelerating pace towards the future of static sealing.

There are currently several ongoing projects including Smart Gaskets, anti-counterfeiting technology, new production methods, design and simulation, ICT and AI, green energy investments and many more. Any of this wouldn’t be possible without the work done in the past and without our current collaborations with different partners such as universities, research institutions and technology companies.

Some of the ideas we have are so groundbreaking that we can’t reveal them before possible patenting – but I’m pretty sure that you’ll hear about them later as we are progressing towards Smarter Sealing for a Safer Tomorrow.