SOL's roots
SOL's former parent company Lindström Oy is one of the oldest businesses still operating in Finland. In 1848 the dye master C. A. Lindström founded a textile dyehouse on the hill where Finland's Parliament House currently stands. The company shares were purchased in 1922 by the founding father of the current family business, chief engineer Johan Roiha, who had established a laundry for white textiles in 1913.
In 1991 Johan Roiha's granddaughter Liisa Joronen acquired the cleaning and waste management services from her family, and at the beginning of 1992 the company adopted a new appearance and a new company name -SOL Siivouspalvelu Oy, with SOL Jätepalvelu Oy as its parent company. The sunny name was selected on the basis of employees' suggestions.
Liisa Joronen, who was interested in management and the inner growth of employees, defended her doctoral thesis "Preconditions for professional growth in organisations" at the University of Helsinki in 1993. She used her own company as the research site for her pedagogical and sociological studies and as the field of experiment.
SOL was granted the Excellence Finland Award in 1991 and 1993, won the Nestor Partners' Trailblazers' Lantern, and also received the Achiever of the Year award in 1992.
Rikaton Oy, a company hived-off from the City of Helsinki, was integrated into SOL Jätepalvelu Oy in 1996, and the new company was named SOL Ympäristöpalvelut Oy. This company was sold to a German operator in 1999. During 1999-2000 SOL also provided textile and carpet leasing services. SOL Tekstiilipalvelut Oy was then sold to Lindström. Since 2001 the consumer laundry and dry-cleaning services that remained at Lindström have been part of the SOL Group, and today these operations are managed under the name SOL Pesulapalvelut Oy.
SOL has offered property services since the 1990s, and this sector, together with facility services, underwent considerable development in the 2000s. During the past years, security services were expanded to cover, for instance, guarding and security check services. At the end of the decade SOL was among the top five security service providers in Finland. In 2009 SOL expanded its operations into personnel services by acquiring a limited company that offers temporary staffing and recruitment services, today known as SOL Henkilöstöpalvelut Oy.
After the diversification of its operations, the company providing cleaning, facility and property services changed its name to SOL Palvelut Oy, with the same parent company, SOLEMO Oy, since the beginning of 2008. SOL's international operations were launched in Estonia in 2001 and today the Group has subsidiaries also in Latvia and Russia.
In 1993 SOL generated net sales of MEUR 30 and employed 2,300 people. In 2011 SOL aims at net sales of MEUR 250 and it employs 10,000 people, 2,500 of whom work abroad. Since the beginning Liisa Joronen has been Chairman of SOL's Board of Directors and Anu Eronen has been SOL's Managing Director until 2011. In September 2011 Peppi Kaira was nominated as Managing Director of SOLEMO Oy and Juhapekka Joronen as Managing Director of SOL Palvelut Oy.
