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Foreign Investors In Estonia | ABB
Step by Step Given ABB’s position as one of the world’s leading engineering companies with 35 billion dollars in annual revenue, 100,000 employees in over 100 countries, and a listing on the New York, Swiss, and Stockholm Stock Exchanges, it would be tempting to conclude that one day after Estonian independence the financial skies opened and ABB money rained over Estonia. But reality is much less dramatic. As ABB Baltics Country Manager Bo Henriksson is quick to point out, his company’s billion-kroon investment (over 60 million euros) in Estonia did not materialize overnight. It has been a steady, well-thought-out, even organic process, which has proceeded step by step since the late 1980s. “ABB had been watching this region since the 1980s, investigating possibilities,” says Henriksson. “We believed in the maxim, ‘Think Global, Act Local,’ and the ABB CEO at the time concluded it was the time to go East.” Henriksson himself was ABB’s first employee in Estonia, stepping off the plane in April 1992 with two small bags.
Acting Local Early expectations were modest. At the time, no one could envision today’s operation of four factories and over a thousand employees. “We started at the beginning,” says Henriksson. “Local market share was the goal.” This meant a place for ABB’s electrical transmission distribution as well as taking part in the modernization of local industry. ABB’s mission was an Estonian one, and it entered the Estonian market for its own sake, not viewing the country as a gateway to Russia or a closer outpost to the East. The Estonian market meant a place to offer ABB’s range of low voltage products and systems for buildings, industries, and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). The sound of construction was everywhere in Estonia, everything from single family homes to construction and renovation of major factories.The market was strong for circuit breakers, plugs and sockets, switches and fusegear, among the other dozens of products ABB manufactured.
Surprising Growth ABB’s first major investment was a factory in Keila to make low-voltage products which found markets in banks, hospitals, other businesses, and private homes. ABB followed with its grids and systems unit—operational within a