KEMIRA DONATES FIM 3.5 MILLION FOR THE FOUNDATION OF A NEW WATER CHEMISTRY PROFESSORSHIP AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OULU

To celebrate Kemira's 80th anniversary, the Kemira Oyj board has decided to donate FIM 3.5 million for the foundation of a new professorship in chemical water treatment at the University of Oulu. This donation will further enhance teaching and research in the field.

The production of chemicals and service entities for the purification of potable and waste waters is one of Kemira's prime areas of growth. The company will continue to channel considerable resources to this field. Kemwater, a strategic business unit of Kemira Chemicals, is the leading producer of water treatment chemicals in Europe; the Pulp and Paper Chemicals SBU provides solutions for P&P industry water treatment; for Kemira Agro, water issues concerning crop husbandry are equally important.

In order to raise the level of and expand expertise in the field of water treatment, Kemira Chemicals established recently the Water Research Centre (WRC), within its Oulu Research Centre.

The University of Oulu is planning to focus further in the teaching and research of environmental technologies and sciences. Traditional water technology research and teaching will be enhanced. These branches were in 1997 transferred to the environmental technologies degree programme instituted at the Department of Process Engineering. This will also allow for more emphasis to be placed on chemical water treatment.

The scientific field of the new chair professorship will be "the chemical treatment of municipal and industrial water and waste water combined with other methods". The purpose is that the professor and his research staff will operate in permanent co-operation with experts of biological water treatment as well. Further, the research projects will fall under the control of industry and water treatment plants, thus allowing the results obtained to be launched more quickly.