Access Platforms and Suspended Platforms

Paul and Markus Roschier (Father & Son) founded Rostek Oy in Finland in 1983.

Both Founders had a Master of Science education in mechanical engineering, Paul being the former Managing Director of a major Company for construction machines (tower cranes) and Markus Sales Manager in international Company for hydraulics.

The Company started its activities in 1984 and concentrated on imports of various construction machines such as Liebherr (Germany) tower cranes, hydraulic access platforms from Genie (USA) and Aerial Access (UK), suspended platforms from Power Climber (Belgium) and later also fall protection systems from Latchways (UK), all these companies being world leaders in their class.

We were also importers of permanently installed access systems (BMU systems) from Koltek, Norway.

The Company grew well and soon achieved a good position on the Finnish market.

However, a severe recession, the worst one in Western Europe since the World War, hit Finland in 1991 and “everybody around Rostek went bankrupt”. The unemployment rate of 21% was the highest in Europe.

Sales of tower cranes in Finland went down from 60 units to 2 in 3 years,  the market for hydraulic machines went down from 1,000 units to 6 (minus 99.4%!!!).

Times were very hard for a few years and when our Norwegian BMU supplier got in trouble, we decided to develop our own Rostek Access System in 1992.

This was a huge investment and required all the financial backing of the Owners.

In 1995 we encouraged some of our staff to form another Company Rostek-Tekniikka and gradually they took over all business activities for imported products and Rostek Oy concentrated totally on own production and exports.