Scandinavian fieldwork giant Norstat assumes full ownership of the up til now jointly owned CATI center in Pori, on the west coast.

Press release from Norstat:

Norstat buys Hermelin Finland/Suomen Tilastopalvelu Ltd
Stronger position as a leading data collection supplier in the Nordic region

Norstat AS is happy to announce the acquisition of all Hermelin data collection activity in Finland. All in all, the new company, Norstat Finland Ltd, will have a turnover of approx 2,1-2,2 Million Euros. Currently, the company consist of 8 full-time employees and 120 part-time employees, and is situated in the town of Pori on the west coast of Finland.

Norstat founded Suomen Tilastopalvelu Ltd in May of 2000, together with the Swedish Hermelin Research and Finnish Corporate Image, due to need to have an encompassing data collection in the Finnish market. During the 8 years after founding, the company has build a good reputation in the Finnish market, while sales and customer-contact were arranged by the Hermelin affiliate Hermelin Finland. With this transaction Norstat buys Hermelin Finland, as well as 59% of shares in Suomen Tilastopalvelu Ltd, and places all activities in Norstat Finland Ltd. Norstat has plans to develop the company further in the Finnish market, in the first stage by founding a sales-office in the Helsinki-area. Sales will in the meantime still be located in Pori. The current management Risto Koivula and Heidi Laitinen, who have both been in the company from the start, will continue in their current assignments.

With this purchase, Norstat strengthens its position as a market leader in the Nordic/Baltic region in the field of data collection, with an expected turnover of about 220 MNOK (approx 27,5 MEUR) in the year 2008, with the area’s largest respondent panel of 240 000 participants, and with about 2000 full- and part-time employees. Norstat has reached a company presence in the whole of Nordic region, as well as Norstat Estonia, Norstat Latvia and Norstat Lithuania. Norstat covers all data collection methods (phone interviews, personal interviews, web- and postal-surveys, recruiting and lending of premises to focus-groups, as well as data reporting) in all the countries that the Group is represented.
 
CEO John Lauring Pedersen from Norstat AS is strongly pleased to be able to ascertain full ownership for its Finnish operations:

”We have from the founding in 2000 considered Suomen Tilastopalvelu to be one of the departments of Norstat, but we are very pleased to have major ownership of the shares and we can fully place the Norstat-logo on the company. We have had excellent cooperation with the company over the years, but as we now enter it as the major owner, we can in a totally different way put our effort into developing the Finnish activity forward, in the same way that we have done with other Norstat companies in the Nordic region. We have a strong faith in the fact that we can keep building the company upwards in the Finnish market, and that our Finnish customers can feel happy about the assembled capacity and competence that resides in the Norstat-system.”

Risto Koivula and Heidi Laitinen who have formed the leading duo in Hermelin Finland/Suomen Tilastopalvelussa, are for their part equally pleased about the change in ownership:

”In our view, the entry of Norstat into the company will be positive, for employees, customers, as well as for us. Norstat has even larger production portfolio than we have been able to provide for our existing customers, and gives us an opportunity to serve the markets in an even better way. We know Norstat well through 8 years of cooperation, both as owner and as customer, and the know that the company looks far and takes its work seriously, issues that are important in the Finnish market.”

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