Eastern Ukrainian children, who had escaped the war in the western side of the country, just started their school year in a brand-new, modern and ecologically-designed school building. Finnish Elemenco Oy, a company specializing in building schools and day care facilities from pre-fabricated units, supplied the new school house.

Elemenco Oy has produced and erected circa 50 school buildings, day care centres and assisted-living facilities in Finland to date. This project in Ukraine was of key importance to our export activities. The school building was delivered as a part of a humanitarian aid programme funded by the Finnish government, and despite the challenging location, the construction work went smoothly and was completed in time. Roads are currently in quite bad shape in Ukraine, so we decided to opt for large sandwich elements instead of the prefabricated units we usually use, and all in all 28 trucks were needed to transport the large horizontal elements to the building site. The wooden floors, intermediate floors, walls, and ceilings were carefully packed in Finland and erected on site in Herson, which is only 100 kilometres from Crimea, says Mr Antero Vartaiainen, CEO of Elemenco Oy. 

The latest solar energy technology was utilised, and together with an air-to-water heat pump system the building actually produces more energy than it needs for air conditioning, heating, and for other energy demands. The solar air-conditioning system was supplied by Savosolar Oy, located in Mikkeli, Eastern Finland.
Elemenco Oy has supplied mobile day care centres and school buildings for over ten years now. The company’s new premises in Kaavi, in Eastern Finland, have enabled a further increase in production capacity, and turnover is expected to double next year. 

Elemenco Oy’s structural
solutions provide various benefits 

– Our buildings do not have mould or moisture-related problems because suspended ground floors are used, and a ventilated base floor prevents moisture from entering the structure. Additionally, the units are manufactured indoors and are protected from moisture already in the manufacturing phase. The buildings are extremely versatile as well as mobile, which opens up many new possibilities according to need. 

 – A day care centre is easily converted into a school, or into an assisted-living building, Vartiainen pointed out, summing up how the users of the buildings benefit from the structural solutions. 

TEXT: Maija-Liisa Saksa