Building for the future
When you arrive to Sandviken from Arlanda and take the second exit from the roundabout, you can see a big yellow brick building at Mossvägen 10. Today it looks a lot like a construction site, with snow-blended mould, machines and construction workers all over the place. It requires a bit of imagination to understand that in September, this will be a high tech innovation facility of excellence.
We meet with Bertil Isaksson, who has been in charge of Customer Relations at Sandvik Coromant, and who is now member of the team that creates the new facility.
What is the reason for such a large investment?
Sandvik is an industry leader with a long history in Sandviken. The new centre will be a permanent show-room and natural meeting place for the industry. Customers, partners, students, experts in related industries, potential employees… we want everyone with a genuine interest in the industry to feel at home here.
What will the new facility look like?
We already have the first part ready, the new prototype workhop. This will help us design and produce tools faster and more efficient. On the other side of the wall, the test workshop is situated, where new tools can be evaluated. 
Our customers often want more than a tool when they come to us. They also want a productive method, so the Application centre is really important for developing tailored solutions for specific customers. This demand is constantly increasing and will be a natural part of our future service. Then, the Productivity centre, where we can share advanced knowledge and productive machining solutions with the latest machines and tools on the market. There will also be large conference rooms and offices here.
What will this mean to your customers?
We welcome around 3,000 visitors from all over the world to our Productivity Centre in Sandviken every year. It is always a success and we want to double that number. With a state of the art workshop and application specialists at hand, our customers will also have the chance to develop unique and competitive solutions together with us at the centre. We do this already today at the Applications centres around the world, and our new facility will act as a raw model for all of them in the future. Sandvik Coromant has more than 30 centres across the globe that are collaborating with customers, partners or students every day.
It's far from ready yet…
Oh, yes. We will be ready in September for the Captial Markets Day, but it's a challenging goal. Not only the size of the new building, which is approximately 4,500 square metres, but also the construction itself. This land is made of moss – which has given the road its name – and the piling requires careful considerations and very deep holes. The new facility will have two floors, which affect the existing building and then we will coordinate the installation of new machines, create a new design inside and a digital infrastructure on a high level. Only to mention some of the challenges we work with. I am convinced that we will manage though, and in September, you are welcome to Mossvägen 10 for a wow-experience.