Press release
Free for publication at 8 p.m. Finnish time, Nov. 12, 2009

Viking Line wins Finnish Quality Award 2009

Viking Line Abp was selected as the winner of this year’s Finnish Quality Award (Suomen Laatupalkinto) competition. The award, given yearly by Excellence Finland (Laatukeskus), goes to organizations with operations in Finland in order to recognize excellence in efforts to improve the quality and competitiveness of these operations. Viking Line was selected for the award in the Major Companies and Large Business Units category. Viking Line’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Nils-Erik Eklund accepted the award at a gala event organized by Excellence Finland on November 12, 2009 at the Hilton Helsinki Kalastajatorppa Hotel.

The Finnish Quality Award competition is based on the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model, in which the operations of the competing organizations are evaluated according to nine criteria of excellence: leadership, policy and strategy, people, partnerships and resources, processes, customer results, people results, society results and key performance results. Viking Line received uniformly high scores in all the evaluation areas. The company also won the Travel Industry Award, which was organized for the first time.

“The 2009 Finnish Quality Award is an important form of recognition for Viking Line’s long-term, systematic quality development efforts. The award, which is given on the basis of evaluations by outside experts, shows that we are on the right path in our work: from safety and environmental management systems and leadership to the development of service quality in keeping with the EFQM model. A service company like Viking Line should, above all, be attentive to the needs of its customers, since it must earn their trust again every day. In this work, the focus is on people. Those who are mainly responsible for quality at Viking Line are its knowledgeable and dedicated employees, who deserve most of the credit for this Quality Award,” says Nils-Erik Eklund, Managing Director and Chief Executive of Viking Line. 

Viking Line began service 50 years ago. The company has transported more than 169 million passengers since then, meanwhile creating an efficient transport system for trade and industry. From the very start, Viking Line’s ambition has been to serve as “the fleet of all the people”.

“Participating in the quality award competition has been a useful and instructive process. The evaluation we have received from Excellence Finland also provides us with a good basis for future improvements in our operations,” says Harri Winter, Director of Shipboard Commercial Operations and the man in charge of Viking Line’s quality improvement efforts.

VIKING LINE ABP

For further information, please contact:

Nils-Erik Eklund, Managing Director and Chief Executive, tel. +358 18 277 23
Harri Winter, Director of Shipboard Commerical Operations, tel. +358 18-27759, +358 400 72 10 09
Tuomas Nylund, Director of Corporate Communications, tel. +358 9 123 52 72, +358 40 551 44 47

Photos will be available after the prize giving ceremony at 8.00 p.m. Finnish time today  www.laatukeskus.fi/laatupalkinto 

Viking Line Abp is a public limited company and the market leading brand in passenger and car ferry traffic on the northern Baltic Sea. Its mission to provide large-scale, affordable, safe passenger and cargo carrier services including first-class recreation, good food and attractive shopping. Viking Line’s service area is the Baltic Sea, with Finland, Sweden and the Baltic countries as its main markets. Its fleet consists of seven vessels. During fiscal 2007/2008, sales were about EUR 475 M. The number of passengers totalled 6.2 million and the average number of employees was 2,994.

The aim of Excellence Finland (Suomen Laatukeskus) is to improve the operations, competitiveness and product quality of companies and public sector organizations, while enhancing the competitiveness of Finland as a whole. Behind the work of Excellence Finland are the Finnish business community and a broad category of specialists who work with quality and improvement efforts. Excellence Finland is owned by the Finnish Society for Quality (Suomen Laatuyhdistys r.y), which in October 2009 had 1,600 individual members, 300 supporting organizational members and 132 voting organizational members. Excellence Finland is the national partner of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), a member of the European Organization for Quality (EOQ) and a world partner of the American Society for Quality (ASQ).