My name is Joakim Söderström. I’m 36 and I work as Production Planner for CLT at Bygdsiljum, known as ‘number 5’ on site, and in Bygdsiljum in general. I’ve been working here for just over a year and a half and I live with my wife and our two children about ten kilometres outside Bygdsiljum in northern Sweden. We’ve been renovating my grandparents’ old house here for the past five years.
I’m originally an economist and HR expert but after spending a number of years travelling a lot for work, I decided to find a more local job so I could stay close to the family. Choosing Martinsons, now Holmen, as an employer was a no-brainer.
Department
The CLT factory is the newest factory on the site and was commissioned in 2017. Bygdsiljum has been producing CLT since 2003 though. But our new premises mean that today we are able to produce about 70 000 m3 a year. There are 20 of us working here at the moment and our CNC machine basically runs round the clock, with a bit of a rest on Saturdays.
A working day
My day always starts at the computer, getting an overview of the previous day’s production, what went well, what went badly, how many panels went through the press, did the CNC get through everything? etc. These are important questions to answer so that I can sort out my planning for the day and get an idea of where we’ll be at the end of the week.
That’s one thing I really love about my job. No two days are the same. Of course there are standard tasks that always have to be done. That’s unavoidable. But because we work on so many different large-scale and small-scale construction projects, there’s always something new going on. My days feature everything from daily planning to project meetings, CNC design, CAD design and problem solving.
My role has an important central function in the factory and I have a huge number of contacts internally within Holmen and externally as well. This means my work is extremely varied, which is why I enjoy it so much.
Why Holmen?
What first led me to apply to Martinsons was the Martinsons spirit, that everyone talks about in Bygdsiljum. A big family business with a lot of security, where everyone’s voice is heard. Why wouldn’t I apply to work here? Now, after a year and a half, we’ve undergone a change with Holmen coming in as a new owner. It might sound like a big change but actually it feels perfectly natural. We are still the family company that Martinsons has always been. That culture is in our blood. The only difference is that now there’s suddenly even more security, we’ve got an even bigger player backing us up and the future can’t be anything other than bright.
Thank you for reading
Thank you so much for giving me this chance to briefly introduce myself and what I do. It’s going to be great to see where the future takes us. Building in wood has only just begun!
