Company

SWITCHES WITHOUT COMPROMISES.

Katko is a Finnish family business specialising in safety switches, load break switches and fused switches with more than 70 years of experience. Not all safety and load break switches on the market come from specialised manufacturers by any means, and that is precisely why we are so proud of ours. We design and manufacture every product ourselves in our own factories. The challenging Finnish climate creates a basis for developing switches that work in all conditions across the globe. Switches without compromises. This is what we at Katko think, as did the generations before us.

ROBOTICS AND HANDWORK. THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS.

We manufacture all of our safety switches, load break switches, fused switches and terminal blocks in our own production plants in Finland and Poland. A high level of automation is part of Katko’s DNA that ensures a consistent quality level in our products. Katko’s flexible and adaptive production philosophy even facilitates the manufacture of smaller batches in a competitive manner. Furthermore, we can provide our customers with more tailored products, and we are ready to do so. This is where Katko’s motivated and professional staff come in. We employ approximately 140 people, two thirds of whom are in Finland.

Taking care of people and the environment are among the most important values of our family business. Our environmental thinking is guided by factors such as efficient raw material use, energy-efficient production and the quality and life cycle of the end product. All of the materials used in our production processes are 100% recyclable.

KATKO’s HISTORY FROM 1938: A ONE CAUSE MOVEMENT.

Katko’s predecessor Auto-Koneistamo Oy was founded in 1938 to repair car engines. The company did not know about switches in its formative years, but the seed of automation that guides Katko’s operations to this day was already planted back then. The founders of the company, Kauko and Tauno Hyryläinen, were interested in new manufacturing methods and were able to automate work phases that used to be carried out as manual labour. Switches entered the scene partially by chance, as the Ministry of Welfare was giving thought to Finland’s self-sufficiency and charting suitable switch manufacturers after the war.

In addition to automation, Katko’s operations have always been guided by strong product development. The company became a pioneer in its field no later than 1959, when Kauko Hyryläinen invented the modern fused switch. When the construction of Katko’s business premises in Vantaa was completed in 1972, the company was already focused on manufacturing switches and related accessories. With equipment investments made in 1989, the same premises entered the era of modern automation. The first switches were exported to Sweden in 1960, but the company’s true internationalisation began in the late 1980s. The Polish factory located in Nidzica was opened in 2006, and a sales office was opened in Dubai in 2007. In 2019 the main factory and office were relocated to Helsinki. Today, Katko products are sold in more than 60 countries on all continents.