From a sauna laundry to three modern plants.
Hilkka Rusanen opened Pesu-Palvelu in October 1966 inside the public sauna on Tallikatu in Pieksämäki. In the 1960s city flats had neither saunas nor washing machines, so a trip to the sauna could be combined with doing the laundry. While the family bathed, the machine washed the laundry. That was the start of sixty years in which a small laundry has grown into three laundries of our own. The company is led by third-generation entrepreneur Jori Rusanen.
Along the way we have built new plants and bought old ones. One of them was a laundry of our own in Tallinn. Its operations ended in the pandemic years, and the focus moved to the unit built in Kerava, today the heart of everything we do. So nothing is washed in Tallinn any more: all the work is done in Finland in our own laundries.
The oldest laundry in Helsinki
The oldest laundry in Helsinki, Oy Pesu Ab, started up. Nine decades later that same laundry became part of Rusanen.
Pesu-Palvelu in Pieksämäki
Hilkka Rusanen opened a laundry inside the public sauna on Tallikatu in Pieksämäki. City flats had no washing machines, so a trip to the sauna could double as laundry day.
The first cleanroom laundry in the Nordics
The electronics and pharmaceutical industries needed a laundry of a kind the Nordics did not yet have. Rusanen built it.
The Pieksämäki industrial laundry
An investment of some twelve million euros made Pieksämäki one of the most modern industrial laundries in Europe. The ribbon was cut by Jori Rusanen together with the mayor and minister Mauri Pekkarinen.
Pattijoen Pesula, Raahe
Rusanen bought Pattijoen Pesula Oy and gained a unit of its own in the north. Locally it is still known as the Pattijoki laundry.
The Kerava industrial laundry
Kerava opened and became the heart of the business and the head office. The centre of gravity moved to the capital region.
Sixty years, and the goal ahead
In 2025 Kauppalehti placed Rusanen among the hundred fastest-growing companies in Finland. It is a long way from a sauna laundry, but the goal is still ahead: to build a textile care chain that serves the whole country.
Headlines along the way.
Our vision.
We want to be the textile care partner a customer calls first. Three laundries of our own, the work done in house with no subcontracting, decisions made the same day, and every customer speaking to a person who knows their site by name. This industry has one clear market leader. We are the challenger, and we intend to keep our promises past the sixty-year mark as well.
We work responsibly. We maintain textiles so they last longer in use.
Repairs extend the working life of a textile. A longer life cuts both the environmental load and the customer’s costs.
SFS-EN 14065:2016
The RABC system. Control of the microbiological cleanliness of textiles is verified in an external audit.
Reliable Partner
The information required by the Finnish Contractor’s Obligations Act is open to check in the Vastuu Group service.
Hankintaunioni
We take part in Hankintaunioni, which pools the purchasing of its member companies.
hankintaunioni.fi →Carbon footprint calculation
We calculate the carbon footprint of our operations and follow how it develops year on year.
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