Finland's struggling flag carrier Finnair said Tuesday that its overall traffic, measured in revenue passenger kilometres, had fallen in February by 9.3 per cent year-on-year, with scheduled traffic picking up by just over two per cent.

"The faint glimmer of a recovery is no more than that," Christer Haglund, a Finnair spokesman, said in a statement.

"Ticket prices are still low, so emerging growth has brought no significant financial boost yet."

Finnair's passenger load factor stood at 80.2 per cent in February, up by about four points from the year-ago period.

STT

Finnish drug maker Orion was the first company affected by a series of stoppages by managerial staff in the country's chemical industry that began on Tuesday.

Over the next couple of weeks about 7,500 managerial staff working in the country's top 20 chemical companies are to take part in the strikes.

Pay and conditions talks between the Federation of Professional and Managerial Staff (YTN) and the Chemical Industry Federation broke down late on Monday.

STT

HOK-Elanto, Finland's biggest cooperative retailer, announced Monday that its Prisma supermarkets would continue to stock milk from Finnish dairy Valio alongside cartons from Arla.

Last week, national daily Helsingin Sanomat reported that HOK-Elanto had replaced Valio with Denmark-based Arla as its main milk supplier, triggering a torrent of criticism on the internet as well as by farmers' lobby MTK and Matti Vanhanen (centre), the prime minister.

Matti Niemi, the managing director of HOK-Elanto, said the debate of the past few days had shown that consumers cared about brands as well as the country of origin.

He repeated that Arla Ingman -branded milk came from Finnish farms.

Arla was HOK-Elanto's main milk supplier until a year ago when the cooperative signed a deal with Valio.

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Finnish paper maker UPM-Kymmene said Monday it had shut down three mills in Finland over a stevedores' strike that began Thursday last week.

UPM-Kymmene added that mills in Jämsä, Lappeenranta and Rauma had been shut down, with plans to close lines in Kouvola and Valkeakoski later this week.

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Danske Bank's Finnish subsidiary Sampo Bank on Monday raised its Finnish 2010 gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast to 1.5 per cent, having forecast one per cent in June last year.

Sampo added in a statement it saw Finland's economy growing by 2.5 per cent next year.

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The office of Esa Lonka, the Finnish government's labour market conciliator, said late on Sunday that talks between the Transport Workers' Union (AKT) and the port operators to end a stevedore strike would resume on Tuesday.

The key sticking point is job security, with the Port Operators' Association saying the AKT has demanded 12 months' severance pay.

The union says its aim is a system to improve the re-employmentchances of workers made redundant.

About 3,000 dockers went on strike Thursday last week, crippling the country's foreign trade.

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Finnish builder Lemminkäinen said in a statement Friday that 21 local councils and the Road Administration had claimed a total of some 65 million euros in damages for a tarmac cartel.

Lemminkäinen said the sum remained preliminary.

Last year, Finland's Supreme Administrative Court fined Lemminkäinen 68 million euros for acting as the lynchpin of a tarmac cartel between 1994 and 2001.

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Finnish national daily Helsingin Sanomat reported Friday that HOK-Elanto, the country's biggest local cooperative retailer, had switched to Arla milk, dealing a severe blow to Finnish dairy Valio.

Eero Isomaa of Finnish farmers' lobby MTK blasted HOK-Elanto's move and added he hoped other cooperatives would not follow suit.

He told the paper that the phenomenon threatened the Finnish dairy industry.

Arla Foods is headquartered in Denmark.

Part of Suomen Osuuskauppa, HOK-Elanto runs a vast network of supermarkets in the Finnish capital region and central Uusimaa.

STT

The Finnish Transport Workers' Union and the country's dozen largest logistics companies agreed Thursday to postpone a strike by a week.
The logistics workers' strike was rescheduled to begin next Thursday.

Esa Lonka, the government labour market conciliator, handed a settlement proposal to the union and the employer side and expects them to respond by Wednesday.

Most of the 1,000 logistics workers covered by the sector's pay and conditions agreement are expected to take part in the industrial action.

An AKT stevedore strike began Thursday morning, halting about 80 per cent of the country's foreign trade.

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Finland-headquartered telecommunications network maker Nokia Siemens Networks said Thursday it would cut up to 450 jobs in Finland.

NSN had said last year it would cut its global workforce by between seven and nine per cent.

The company added it would launch a round of statutory cooperation procedure talks in Finland next week.

STT