Kemppi Oy, famed for its welding solutions, is investing in production expansion and hopes to consolidate its hold on global markets.

The manufacturer and its parent company Kemppi Capital OY, which specialises in investment and real estate, have constructed a new office and a production facility in Lahti, Finland.
Kemppi is also building R&D laboratories and a logistics facility and installing additional equipment at the older plant. The total cost for all these developments will be 20 million  euros ($25.9 million). 
It will be he principal tenant in the new office building and move its electronics and coil component production into the new plant.
Kemppi, an exhibitor at Gulf Industry Fair, has subsidiaries in 13 countries, sales offices and retailers in over 70 and a turnover of more than 143 million euros.
It claims its Minarc and Fastmig products, introduced earlier in this millennium, are the very latest in welding technology. They continue the development of the power source technology that began in the 1970s with Kemppi’s Hilarc power source based on inverter technology and was continued in the 1980s’ Multisystem PS and PSS multi-process machines and the 1990s’ Master and Pro product families.
“Kemppi has always possessed an environmental streak in its operations,” a company spokesman says. “As the revolutionary Kemppi Hilarc 250 inverter power source was launched at Essen Welding Fair in 1977, a new era began in the lifetime consumption of electricity for welding equipment. Eventually, the Kemppi standard became the global standard for the entire industry.The spokesman observes that as globalisation presented serious challenges in terms of production costs in all sectors of industry, Kemppi’s response has been “customer-orientation and good service.”
“By creating new types of service products, such as the Kemppi Arc System, incorporating the gathering and analysis of welding data as well as various usability and design solutions, Kemppi has managed to further strengthen its position in the welding machine market,” he adds.

Cern
A part of the Kemppi Group, Kempower Oy signed a 7-million-euro deal with the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, CERN, for delivering 200 special power converters to the new LHC particle accelerator. With a diameter of 27 km (17 miles) it is designed to be the largest accelerator in the world. 
Kempower’s power supplies produce 60 per cent of the electric current required by the control magnets of this gigantic accelerator. The quality requirements imposed on the power supplies are extremely stringent, as the magnets must be able to precisely control almost immaterial particles along the long track.

Design
Kemppi’s MinarcMig 180 Adaptive welding machine has won the esteemed international Red Dot design award. The award was granted for excellent usability, ergonomics, durability and compact functionality of the machine. Kemppi Oy is particularly proud of this recognition as it is one of the most sought-after industrial design awards in the world.

High-speed camera 
Kemppi’s research and development took a leap forward with the development of a modern high-speed camera. With the new camera, Kemppi’s research and development opened into an entirely new era.
The high-speed camera can take up to 250,000 pictures per second, which allows for practically freezing time at any given point in the welding process. When the phenomena photographed with the high-speed camera are combined with the welding current and voltage curves, valuable information of the behaviour of the arc and transmission of the filler material in different environments can be obtained.
Kemppi OY is based in Lahti, Finland (www.kemppi.com).
Its agent in Saudi Arabia is Alruqee Industrial Marketing Co Ltd, Al Khobar (www.alruqee.net).