Metso Brand Guidelines: A Capercaillie, the Lokotrack & the Name That Came Back

One name out of 6,500 suggestions.

Metso is the Finnish word for a bird. When Valmet, the paper-machine maker that began as Finland’s State Metal Works in 1946, and the engineering group Rauma decided to merge in November 1998, the new business first ran as Valmet-Rauma. Finnish Wikipedia, citing Helsingin Sanomat of May 1999, says the replacement name came from a staff competition. Among 6,500 suggestions, three proposed metso, the capercaillie, a large forest grouse familiar to Finns, and all three entrants received cash prizes. The same article, citing Metso’s own history pages of 2012, says the company’s mark imitated the shape of the bird’s wings. Metso’s annual report for 1999 records that an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting approved the name on 18 August 1999 and that it was registered on 24 August.

The crushers came through Rauma. The company history published by Gale says Rauma-Repola bought Lokomo of Tampere, founded in 1915, in 1970, and in the late 1980s added Nordberg of the United States and Bergeaud of France, combining them under the Nordberg name; English Wikipedia dates the Nordberg purchase to 1989. Finnish Wikipedia says Lokomo began making stone crushers in 1921, and that crushers were what remained after it left cranes and excavators in 1985. Metso itself says its industrial journey began with Lokomo, a locomotive maker, in 1915. In 2001 it bought the Swedish rock-processing equipment maker Svedala, Finnish Wikipedia says.

The group then shed its other businesses in stages. The forest-machine maker Timberjack went to the American company Deere. Shareholders approved a split on 1 October 2013, and the pulp, paper and power business became independent under the old Valmet name, leaving Metso with mining, construction and automation; process automation systems followed to Valmet in 2015. In June 2019, The Irish Times reported, Metso bought McCloskey International, the Canadian-headquartered maker with a large workforce in Northern Ireland.

Metso Outotec, then Metso again.

A month later came the deal that took the name away. On 4 July 2019 Metso and Outotec announced that Metso’s Minerals business and Outotec would combine as “Metso Outotec,” while Metso’s flow control business would be listed separately as Neles. Outotec had been the technology arm of the stainless steel group Outokumpu until it was spun off in 2006, English Wikipedia says. The European Commission cleared the merger on 13 May 2020, the partial demerger was registered on 30 June, and Metso Outotec and Neles began operating on 1 July 2020. The remaining Metso company became Neles, Finnish Wikipedia says, and for almost three years no group traded under the name Metso alone. Neles and Valmet, the business Metso had split from in 2013, agreed to merge in July 2021, English Wikipedia says.

The merged group then rebuilt how its machines looked. In April 2021 Metso Outotec said it would update the “industrial branding” of its whole product and service portfolio. Light grey became the main product colour, replacing the previous schemes of both companies, with a darker grey as an accent. The company called black and orange its brand colours, said its logo would always be visible on products, and said product names would be marked with an orange stripe. The change was phased in from new launches in 2021. Standalone aggregates brands including McCloskey, Shaorui and Jonsson were left out and kept their existing branding.

Shareholders took the next step in May 2023. The annual general meeting approved the name Metso Corporation, effective 4 May 2023. Pekka Vauramo, then chief executive, said the company wanted “a strong unified Metso company and brand,” and called the name “short yet established.” The company’s release said the visual identity would remain unchanged, with the new name reflected in the logo, and that Outotec would continue as a product brand. KHL reported the change the next day under the headline “Back to the future.” In September 2023 the headquarters moved from Sanomatalo in Helsinki to Matinkylä in Espoo.

Rock, rotors and recycling yards.

Crushing and shredding makers sell machines that are hard to photograph badly. The usual picture is a tracked crusher on a quarry bench, its conveyor throwing stone onto a stockpile, with the plant small against the rock face. A mobile screen in the maker’s signature colour, parked on the same bench, does the work of a logo at a distance, and many of these brands treat paint as part of the identity. Metso, for one, set out its machine colours in a dated release in 2021.

Waste machinery has a different picture. Shredder makers show the inside of the machine: a cut-away rotor with its cutters on display, or bales of plastic heading into a hopper. Compost screens and trommels appear in long windrows, and recycling yards are often shot from a drone, so the sorted heaps form a pattern from above.

Trade fairs give the sector its calendar. Bauma in Munich, CONEXPO-CON/AGG in Las Vegas and Hillhead in Britain gather the quarry trade, and IFAT in Munich gathers the waste and recycling trade. Metso’s Lokotrack went to Munich in 1986, Metso says, and Powerscreen used CONEXPO and Hillhead to mark its 60th anniversary in 2026. Fair stands are where these brands show new models beside restored old ones, and where dealers, who do much of the selling, meet the factory.

Product names carry unusual weight. Ranges are named as families, and a name can outlast the company that made it: several brands in this guide sit inside larger groups and keep their own names, colours and dealer networks. Ownership changes often, so each entry here gives dates for who owns what, and what each company says about where its machines are made.

A product name that outgrew its maker.

Metso’s best-known machine name is older than Metso. In 1985 two Finnish contractors, Mauno Vuorsola and Olavi Puputti, took Lokomo the idea of a crawler-mounted cone crusher. Metso names the first customer as Telamurska, says the unit was handed over on 31 December 1985, and says the design replaced wheels with the undercarriage of a used excavator. The Lokotrack name, coined by the Lokomo manager Pentti Pietilä, joined the company’s heritage to its function. Metso says serial production began in 1987, as an industry first, and that more than 11,000 units had been sold by its 40th anniversary, figures Recycling Product News and AT Minerals repeated in February 2025. Metso also says the range won an iF Design Fennia Prize in 2014, and Pietilä recalls rivals using the word as a generic term, with “Locotrack” appearing in Spanish-speaking regions. It is now a registered trademark in Metso’s key markets, the company says.

Beside it sits Nordberg, the American name now carried by a jaw crusher developed in Finland. Metso says the Nordberg C Series was introduced in 1975 by engineers in Tampere, with more than 13,000 delivered. Its cone crushers carry the Nordberg HP and HPE names. In September 2024 Metso agreed to buy Diamond Z and Screen Machine Industries, American makers of grinders and of crushing and screening plant, which it said would continue to operate independently. Not everything stayed: in July 2021, KHL reported, Metso Outotec agreed to sell its Waste Recycling business to the Finnish investor Ahlström Capital, and the business would take the M&J name. Metso describes itself today as serving aggregates, minerals processing and metals refining, with about 18,000 employees.

Metso calls its plant in Tampere the dedicated Lokotrack factory. It says it will gradually move from Hatanpää, the old Lokomo district, to a new Lokomotion technology centre at Lahdesjärvi, with track-mounted plant production scheduled to start there in the third quarter of 2027. In June 2026 it added a second phase, a new crusher factory.

For a design guide, Metso shows how a corporate name can be lost and recovered while the product names underneath never move. Compare McCloskey International, the group’s standalone brand, and Neles, the valve maker that left in 2020. For this guide we use black, a burnt orange and a machine grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Metso’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.