Karl Nars (13 August 1874 – 21 January 1952) was a well-known industrialist in

Jakobstad Jakobstad (; , ) is a town in Finland, located on the west coast of the country. Jakobstad is situated in Ostrobothnia (administrative region), Ostrobothnia, along the Gulf of Bothnia. The population of Jakobstad is approximately , while the Jako ...

in the first half of the 20th century. As of 1934, Nars was the owner of the steampowered sawmill in Jakobstad ''(Swedish: Jakobstad ångsåg)''. Karl Nars and his sons founded and developed the Nars Industries ''(Swedish: Narska företagen)'' into a significant industrial group, mainly in the areas of timber and

wood processing Wood processing is an engineering discipline in the wood industry comprising the production of forest products, such as pulp and paper, construction materials, and tall oil. Paper engineering is a subfield of wood processing. The major wo ...

, as well as in

plastics Plastics are a wide range of synthetic or semisynthetic materials composed primarily of polymers. Their defining characteristic, plasticity, allows them to be molded, extruded, or pressed into a diverse range of solid forms. This adaptab ...

manufacturing. His son Walter Nars founded Nars Ab in 1943.

Oy Nars Ab

Having originally made their fortune with timber and forestry products, the Nars family became pioneers in Finnish plastics manufacturing. In 1948, they were first in Finland to manufacture calendered

PVC Polyvinyl chloride (alternatively: poly(vinyl chloride), colloquial: vinyl or polyvinyl; abbreviated: PVC) is the world's third-most widely produced synthetic polymer of plastic (after polyethylene and polypropylene). About 40 million tons o ...

foils, and soon expanded the product range into plastic hose, profiles and floor coverings at their rapidly expanding manufacturing facilities in

. After having been hit by an acute economic crisis in the early 1960s, Oy Nars Ab was taken over by the

Kansallis-Osake-Pankki Kansallis-Osake-Pankki (KOP) was a Finnish commercial bank operating from 1889 to 1995. It was created by the fennoman movement as a Finnish language alternative to the largely Swedish language bank, Suomen Yhdyspankki (''Swedish: Föreningsbank ...

bank, and subsequently sold to a competitor '' Wiik & Höglund'', who were also active in plastics manufacturing. The fusion of the two companies developed into today's KWH Plast, a subsidiary of

KWH Group KWH Group Ltd (, ) is one of Finland's largest companies in abrasives, logistics services and plastics. It is headquartered in Vaasa, Finland. From a modest start in the timber industry, KWH Group grew to be the biggest timber exporter in Finl ...

, one of Finlands leading companies in

abrasives An abrasive is a material, often a mineral, that is used to shape or finish a workpiece through rubbing which leads to part of the workpiece being worn away by friction. While finishing a material often means polishing it to gain a smooth, reflec ...

and

logistics Logistics is the part of supply chain management that deals with the efficient forward and reverse flow of goods, services, and related information from the point of origin to the Consumption (economics), point of consumption according to the ...

services.

References

KWH Group web-site
1874 births 1952 deaths People from Pedersöre People from Vaasa Province (Grand Duchy of Finland) Swedish-speaking Finns Finnish businesspeople {{finland-bio-stub