Orion has been building well-being since 1917. This chapter leads to the company’s phases over the past 90 years.

The two first decades

The start

Orion was established by “three dreamers” as the Great War raged. The year was 1917 and Finland’s independence was just around the corner. These men were the chemists Onni Turpeinen, Eemil Tuurala and Wikki Walkama, dubbed “dreamers” by Juhani Leikola in Mitäpä tässä (So It Goes), his biography of Erkki Leikola, his father and the long-serving managing director of Orion.

One of the reasons they founded a company of their own was that they were Finnish speakers. At that time, business interests in Finland were mainly controlled by the Swedish-speaking elite. Their previous employer was Medica, a pharmaceutical/chemical manufacturer run by Swedish-speaking management. The careers of these three men would not take flight there. They resolved that their own pharmaceutical plant would be pro-Finnish. Their own language would be spoken there. The share capital of Orion O/Y was FIM 1,000, which in modern currency amounts to roughly one thousand euros. Orion’s share capital is now over EUR 92 million, or about FIM 572,000 in 1917’s currency.

From “a dump” to Vallila

Orion had modest beginnings. It was housed in an altogether grim building – a former butter plant on Mariankatu street 24 in the Kruununhaka area of Helsinki. Dr. Arvo Ylppö, who was appointed to Orion’s Management Board in 1925, would later say, “Due to poverty and lack of capital, Orion was forced to operate in a small building that I now wouldn’t hesitate to call a dump.”

The company’s first major products were the artificial sweetener dulcine, lysol, ammonia and the rifle cleaning oil Bellistol. At that time, Orion had not as yet started up drug manufacture. Bellistol sold well in wartime.

Orion began to bring drugs to market at the beginning of the 1920s. These products included eye creams, acetylsalicylic acid pills, rhubarb tablets and Nutrol, a nutritional supplement made of fish liver oil and malt extract.

Orion went through extremely rough times in the 1920s. After the war, access to foreign drugs became easier and competition tightened. Times became so tough that, in 1929, even the dissolution of the company was considered seriously. Another alternative was to merge with the competitor Medica, but the company’s owners would not submit to that option. Orion avoided liquidation by lowering its share capital and cutting wages. The managing director also had to content himself with a lower salary.

The company’s finances were knocked into shape by means such as enlarging the shareholder base and raising the share capital. Arvo Ylppö made a significant contribution to this rescue operation. He had become one of the company’s supporters back in 1922 at the behest of Professor Gustaf Komppa, the Chairman of the Board. Dr. Ylppö wasted no time or effort. Thanks to him, more of his peers – mainly physicians and pharmacists – came on board as shareholders. Part of the present Orion’s shares have been inherited by the descendants of these venture capitalists. Dr. Ylppö was a member of the company’s senior management during the whole of his long life, sharing in both its good and bad times.

At the end of the 1920s, Orion’s twenty-odd workers were making all the products by hand, from start to finish. Production was modern in the sense that products were made only to satisfy immediate demand. This was because the company had no storage space. For instance, there were days when a bicycle courier would make three stops at the same pharmacy – each time, to deliver a single tube of flu ointment. The customer simply waited at the pharmacy until his tube arrived. The company had one sales representative who tried to visit every doctor in the country at least once a year. Orion acquired its first delivery van in 1933 – and even that was a used car.

Things changed in the early 1930s. In 1933, Erkki Leikola, M.D., surgeon, took the company’s reins. The following year, Orion moved to new premises in Vallila, suburban Helsinki. Orion’s growth surged. In 1933-1938, its sales grew sixfold, and in 1938 amounted to FIM 12 million, or about EUR 3.5 million. Orion had rapidly become Finland’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturer. Then came the war.

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