A TIME OF REORGANIZATION

For Head Invest, the 2010s have been a time of change. The company is becoming a second generation family business. The ownership strategy has been clarified and, in line with the strategy, we continue to operate as the parent company of an industrial group. As a family business, we are an established and stable parent company that supports the long-term growth and development of our subsidiaries.

In 2011, we made headlines by reacquiring JOT Automation, which had been acquired by the German company Rohwedder AG in 1998. After turning the company around, we sold its entire share capital in 2018 to Suzhou Victory Precision, a company listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

The sale of JOT Automation allowed us to reorganize, leading to the formation of Head Team and the creation of the new subsidiaries.

A TIME OF INVESTMENT

The first decade of the millennium was a time of strong investment for us. We founded several new companies in the early 2000s.

We were involved in establishing a variety of companies that all focused on improving well-being and the environment, and this also shaped our current business philosophy. We also nurtured the urban culture and cultural heritage of Northern Finland – by renovating Oulu’s historical Uusi Seurahuone building for restaurant use and founding the Forum24 city newspaper.

Along with investing in new companies, the investments we had made in the 1990s began to pay off. For example, Proventia – which develops advanced technologies for emission control in diesel engines and for developing and testing electric vehicles – grew throughout the decade.

Head Invest is the parent company of a technology-focused group, owned by its founder and his family. The core of our business revolves.

Technology for a more sustainable future

JOT’s founder Veikko Lesonen has always had a lot of new ideas that he gradually developed over long periods of time. Lesonen decided to sell JOT to allow the company to focus on creating even more important products for a better and more sustainable future.

The sale of JOT in 1998 was followed by the founding of Head Invest Ltd, which then began to look for investment targets among the start-ups located in Oulu. Technology was – and still is – the common denominator for Head Invest’s companies, which are building a better future for the well-being of people and the environment.

At the turn of the millennium, Head Invest’s founder and his wife established the Eija and Veikko Lesonen Foundation, which supports the well-being of children and young people living mainly in Northern Finland.

It all started with automation

The 1980s revolutionized Oulu, as many information and communications companies and the related subcontractors were founded. One of those companies was Suomen JOT-palvelu, established by Veikko Lesonen in 1988.

JOT specialized in solutions for testing in production automation and the electronics industry. The company found its niche in the area of improving electronics production practices. Automation replaced heavy and inflexible manual processes.

JOT became one of the world’s leading production automation companies. Since then, it has solved countless sustainable development challenges by reducing the number of intermediate warehouses and increasing efficiency in many ways.