Company history
Makron 50 years
Half a century of Makron, Lahti
When Pekka Leppänen, an engineer from Lahti, bought Makron from the industrialist Jalo Paananen, the region gained a new engineering company that combined Makron’s customer focus, the best technology in the field and Leppänen’s vision of renewing the engineering industry.
The book is available as a PDF on Makron’s website.
- Client
- Makron
- Published
- 2025
- The writer
- Sane Keskiaho
- Design
- Antti Grundsten
- Interviews
- Over 20
- Languages
- Finnish and English
The story
When Johanna Vuopala, the company’s current CEO and a second-generation entrepreneur, took charge of the group in 2017, she carried on her father’s vision.
Under her leadership Makron has become a full-service technology company: a versatile partner for industrial modernisations, automation solutions, robotics integrations, machine and equipment manufacturing and mechanical design.
The past fifty years have held bold and at times risky acquisitions, the tuition fees of going international, surviving recessions and redirecting the strategy. Balancing vision and practical execution has been constant. Perhaps the biggest realisation has been that vision alone is not enough. Success takes the ability and the nerve to change, and that is the road Makron is on under Vuopala.
“I am very proud of the people at Makron. Through all the phases and challenges we have managed to grow Makron to this scale,” she writes at the start of the 50th anniversary history. 2024 was the best year in Makron’s history.
The work
A narrative company history
More than twenty former and current Makron people were interviewed for the book: employees, management, partners and customers.
The company and family archives were used as well. The result is a narrative history of about 150 pages, published in both Finnish and English.
