The energy industry's top event EnergyWeek will be held at Vaasa City Hall between 20 and 24 March. Registration opened on 15 January, and the enrolment numbers are good. Once again, thousands of participants from dozens of different countries are expected to attend EnergyWeek, and exhibitors have made numerous reservations throughout the four exhibition days.

Finnish Minerals Group and FREYR Battery have signed a cooperation agreement to assess the feasibility of establishing an LFP cathode material plant in Vaasa. The parties are exploring opportunities for a joint venture.

Scandinavian Airlines SAS will launch the Vaasa—Stockholm connection earlier than announced. The first flight will depart on 3 April, and the tickets will be released for sale on 10 February.

The 2022 figures for the Vaasa-based operations of Kvarken Ports, the joint port company of the cities of Vaasa and Umeå, show strong growth across the board. The growth of industry in the Vaasa region and the positive trend towards environmentally friendly shipment by sea were reflected in several transport areas of Kvarken Ports Vaasa.

FREYR Battery has made a planning reservation on a plot in the GigaVaasa area for the construction of a cathode materials factory. Plot 16, which became vacant after Johnson Matthey sold off their battery materials business, has now been reserved for the factory.

Finnish Minerals Group and Epsilon Advanced Materials have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) under which the companies will evaluate the possibility of setting up an anode materials production facility in Vaasa. A plot of land in the GigaVaasa area has been reserved for the facility after it became vacant when the cooperation between Grafintec Oy and Epsilon Advanced Materials ended on the 25th of August 2022.

Although Vaasa wants to be the happiest city in the world, the Strömsö embrace does not always reach here the same way as it does at Strömsö. Failures are part and parcel of normal life, which means that we all screw up sometimes. We want to point out that happiness is not the same thing as perfection and constant success.

Vaasan seudulla on jo pitkään tehty laajaa yhteistyötä ekosysteemimallin mukaisesti, mutta nyt vuosien 2021–2027 ajalle ulottuvan Ekosysteemisopimuksen mukaisesti yliopistokaupunkien kanssa luotiin erilliset sopimukset.

Last week, EnergyWeek 2022 brought together a record number of visitors to seminars and exhibitions. EnergyWeek was welcomed with great interest as the event week was organised for the first time since 2019.

The EnergyVaasa energy cluster has been granted an ECEI Gold Label certificate of the highest degree, which demonstrates first-class, sophisticated cluster management. There are ca 1000 clusters in Europe, i.e., geographical concentrations that have formed around actors in a certain industry. The Gold Label certificate of the Vaasa cluster is the first of its kind in Finland, and the energy industry’s fourth in the Nordic countries and sixth in Europe.