Distribution of company announcements to the professional platforms, finance portals and syndication of important corporate news to a wide variety of news aggregators and financial news systems.
Outotec Oyj OUTOTEC OYJ PRESS RELEASE, JUNE 10, 2008 AT 12.30 PM
Outotec granted 22 employees a Technology Award at the Outotec Technology Seminar on June 10, 2008 in Helsinki, Finland, in conjunction with the Millennium Technology Week. The awards totaled approximately EUR 100,000. Outotec's Technology Award is aimed at encouraging the employees to make new technological inventions and innovations.
"Outotec is a corporate partner of the Millennium Technology Prize. Sustainable technology is at the heart of everything we do. Our business is to develop new technologies, which benefit our customers, while taking into account economical, social and environmental issues. To encourage this, we do everything possible to support innovation, by rewarding people for ideas and investing in research", stated CEO Tapani Järvinen in his speech titled 'Success through sustainable technologies' to the audience consisting of the company's various stakeholders.
Other speakers in the Outotec technology seminar were the 2008 Millennium Technology Prize Laureate, Professor David Payne from Southampton University and Professor Pekka Himanen from the University of Art and Design in Helsinki and Visiting Professor at Oxford University.
Senior Awards granted
Senior Awards for numerous significant contributions to Outotec over a long career were granted to: - Christian von Alfthan for active involvement in the development of sampling and analysis technologies and applications. He is the inventor of 9 patents, which have significantly contributed to the Outotec's global market leader position in the on-stream analysis of slurry particle size and elemental composition; - Dr. Ali-Naghi Beyzavi for the development of recently patented microgranulation technology that allows Outotec to apply fluidized bed technology to very fine materials. In addition, he is one of the inventors of the Circosmelt® process for treatment of titanium-containing ores; - Väinö Kylä-Heikkilä for his deep commitment to designing automation for the anode casting systems. Some 80% of the world's copper anodes are cast using Outotec casting machines. The reason why Outotec is a global leader in casting shop deliveries is particularly thanks to the smooth operation of the highly automated casting machine. In addition, Mr. Kylä-Heikkilä has participated in the engineering, delivering and commissioning of almost all Outotec casting shops, the number of which is close to 70 all around the world; and to - Dr. Antti Roine for the development of the world's most popular thermodynamic software, HSC Chemistry®. He started the development work alone 33 years ago for personal purposes to make thermodynamic calculations easier. Until today numerous processes associated with Outotec's business cases and R&D projects have been modeled using this software and over 14,000 copies of the Windows version of HSC Chemistry® have been sold to chemical and metallurgical industries and universities in 75 countries.
Junior Awards granted
Junior Awards for demonstrating exceptional innovativeness and commitment to Outotec as a junior employee were granted to: - David Cachero Ventosa for his significant contribution to engineering of sulfuric acid plants; - Tuukka Kotiranta for active involvement in the development of process modeling concepts and the HSC Sim Flowsheet Module; - Antti Rinne for significant contribution to the commercialization of the FloatForce® flotation mechanism, especially ensuring the global manufacturing capability of the new components; - Rami Saario for a keen interest in developing equipment in the copper solvent extraction projects even with radical changes to achieve more feasible solutions; and to - Dr. Jari Tiihonen for remarkable activity, capability and innovativeness in the field of zinc hydrometallurgy.
Team Awards granted
Team Awards for a team whose joint effort has resulted in a significant technological contribution were granted to two teams: - Team realizing FloatForce®, the new family of flotation mechanisms. This core team has accomplished the customer need analysis and business studies, fundamental research, development and commercialization of the FloatForce® flotation mechanism. Based on creative idea generation, systematic physical and computational modeling, test work from laboratory to industrial scale and a careful commercial launch, it has brought the first radical change to the mechanical flotation technology market since the introduction of OK mechanisms in the 1960s. The team members are Raimo Airola, Peter Bourke, Dr. Rodrigo Grau, Sami Grönstrand, Seppo Ronkainen, Klaus Schommarz, Juha Tiitinen and Janne Turunen (Helsinki University of Technology); and to - Team that successfully developed a new green anode paste plant and spent anode crushing technology for aluminum smelters. This technology was a key success factor in the EUR 100 million contract with Dubai Aluminium. The team members are Manfred Beilstein, Rudolf Gemein, Ulrich Hüwel, Klaus Jungk and Dr. Michael Ströder.
For further information please contact:
OUTOTEC OYJ
Dr. Kari Knuutila, Chief Technology Officer tel. +358 20 529 2009, +358 40 779 9566 e-mail kari.knuutila(at)outotec.com
