Stora Enso: The heart of Varkaus

Stora Enso is the main company of Varkaus. If you know the TV Show "The Simpsons", you will remember the episode when Mr. Burns' Company closed and the whole city started dying because of it. Well, the same thing would happen to Varkaus if Stora Enso were about to close. This company is the heart of Varkaus, it's the hugest company in Varkaus.

They product Uncoated fine papers: business forms, envelope, scholastics, offset and thin printing papers. There are about 260 employees. Even we in Varkaus studied the Paper Process Technology.


For further information: http://www.storaenso.com/about-us/mills/finland/varkaus-mill/Pages/from-wood-to-printed-newspaper.aspx

Life in the dormitory

Hello, today I will tell you about where we live and how we live.

Our building by night

1) Structure of the building

 Our building has three floors that you can reach with outdoor stairs (the two towers with lights) and each floor is composed with five flats. The heart of each flat is the living room, it is surrounded by five bedrooms, two restrooms, one bathroom and one kitchen, the flats are quite small and there is not a lot of light in them. However, we have everything we need to cook and the heat is good.

At the first floor, we can also mention that there is a washroom with three washing machines for doing the laundry, there is also a ping-pong table where we play once in awhile.

2) Population of the building

The first floor is only composed with Chinese people and the second floor with Chinese and Vietnamese people. Amandine and I are living at the third floor, it is composed with mostly French and Chinese people and there is one Spanish boy. We both live in the same flat with another two french guys (a boy and a girl) coming from Annecy and one Chinese girl. Unfortunately this situation (basically the same for every French person here), doesn't give us the opportunity to speak english very often, this is one of our biggest disappointments. 

3) Localisation of the building

Our building is located 100 meters away from the university, we don't have to walk long to go to work and it is a huge advantage knowing how cold it was during the winter, there is another dormitory composed with mostly Russian people and they live 30 minutes away from the university. Our dormitory is about 15-20 minutes away by foot from the grocery stores and the other shops, it's a long walk but we've got used to it.

Courses in Savonia

During 3 months, we are studying in Savonia University. We have 12 hours of courses a week. Here is our timetable:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday
8.00 – 9.30			Manufacturing
9.45 – 11.15	Process Technology		Written Business Communication	Projects
12.15 – 13.45		Manufacturing		Projects
14.00 – 15.45	Process Technology			Projects

In process technology, we have been studying process flow diagram, energy and power usage in pumping, mechanical processes and paper technology. Paper industry is very present in Finland. There is a paper plant in Varkaus, Stora Enso. So it’s interesting to learn how paper machine works.

In introduction to manufacturing, we have been studying metal cutting technology. The teacher passes us several tools during the class and today we visited tool machines that students use in their TP.

In written business communication we have been doing several grammatical and vocabulary exercises. We have done an oral presentation: we had to do a summary about a business article which we had chosen. We did exercises about incoterms and terms of payments in international trade.

In projects, we work about ERP software. We have to explain what is an ERP software, choose one and explain how we make it work.

We don’t have course the Friday, but it’s the possibility to do other activities:

The first week the projects teacher show us round a stairs company, Kierreporras which is a very small company.

Last week, we organized a day in Kuopio, a city located 76 km from Varkaus. We visited a church, and then we went round an ice lack. On it, there was a windmill. 

Next Friday, we will have training about Hot-Work course in order to have a certification.