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Weekend Wrap

Uber sleigh rides, symphonic metal ABBA and €23 million funding round

UPCOMING

UPCOMING

Holidays are definitely coming. Uber offers reindeer rides, and a symphonic metal ABBA tribute album comes with festive flavours. In addition, we cover packaging innovations, major funding rounds and more. Click on the links below to take a detailed look at recent creativity from Finland.

"Genuinely invigorating and refreshing" is how Limelight describes a new Sibelius recording from Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali. The magazine gave it five stars and notes Rouvali "heads up three orchestras, is a percussionist by training, conducts with balletic gestures, hunts his own food in the forests and likes to unwind with a sauna".

Marco Borggreve

Lumene was recognised at the Sustainable Beauty Awards. The Finnish cosmetics brand's compact powder pack received the runner-up award in the sustainable packaging category. The pack is recyclable, reusable and made from recycled materials, the company writes.

Lumene

Finnish actor Joonas Suotamo is best known as Chewbacca in the latest Star Wars movies. But his next role is far removed from this beloved character. The 211 centimetres tall ex-basketball player plays the beastly, muscular baddie Scourge in the upcoming movie Willow. Suotamo talked with Lucasfilm.com about the experience, and spending two to three hours in the make-up chair every morning. 

Facebook / Joonas Suotamo

Rive has closed a whopping 23 million euro funding round. The Helsinki-based company has built an AI-powered real estate platform to simplify the property buying and selling process. According to EU-Startups, the platform offers tools for both house buyers and real estate agents.

Rive

Love coffee pods but hate the waste? Now there is a compostable option. Nestlé and consumer packaging specialist Huhtamäki have developed paper-based, home-compostable coffee capsules for the latter's Nespresso brand. According to Packaging Europe, the capsules will be piloted in France and Switzerland in spring 2023 before a wider release.

Nespresso

Should there be a symphonic metal version of ABBA? Definitely, if you ask the Finnish band Amberian Dawn. The metal group has just released a new album, Take a Change - Metal Tribute to ABBA. The New European describes it as a potentially ideal soundtrack for this festive season. It writes the metal band is "just loads of fun, the dramatic grandiosity of their sound matching the Swedes' pop pomp, as well as being as camp as Christmas".

Karri Harju

Fashion and McDonald's sounds like an unlikely pair. But the fast food giant has teamed up with Finnish streetwear brand VAIN to transform its standard uniforms into a collection of upcycled clothes. The collection's 27 pieces, including dresses, hoodies and mini skirts, will only be available to McDonald's employees in Finland, reports CNN

Sofia Okkonen

John Storgårds has been named the BBC Philharmonic's new Chief Conductor, The Violin Channel writes. The Finnish conductor takes on the role after a long history with the orchestra as Storgårds first conducted them in 2010 and has been their Chief Guest Conductor for the past five years. 

Marco Borggreve

More funding news. Smart energy storage developer Cactos has raised 2.5 million euros to provide a new lease of life for electric vehicle batteries. The Finnish startup says it can restore them to a fully operational and safe condition. Currently, the company uses spent Tesla batteries as its primary material source, writes Tech EU.

Cactos

The EU has awarded seven million euros to a Helsinki University Hospital led consortium for implementing value-based cancer care. The consortium focuses on improving the collection of real-world data in European cancer hospitals. This data, in turn, will "support the implementation of safer, more efficient, and personalised novel cancer therapies".

Helsinki University Hospital
Published on 09.12.2022