Valtion Kivääritehdas (VKT), ''State Rifle Factory'' in English, was a Finnish state-owned firearms manufacturer that existed independently in the Tourula district of

Jyväskylä Jyväskylä () is a city and municipality in Finland in the western part of the Finnish Lakeland. It is located about 150 km north-east from Tampere, the third largest city in Finland; and about 270 km north from Helsinki, the capital of ...

in Finland from 1926 to 1946. The first serial product in the factory was the

Lahti-Saloranta M/26 The ''Lahti-Saloranta M/26'' (alternatively ''LS/26'') is a light machine gun which was designed by Aimo Lahti and Arvo Saloranta in 1926. The weapon was able to fire in both full automatic and semi-automatic modes. Both 20-round box and 75-roun ...

light machine gun. Other military firearms included the Lahti L-35 pistol and the

Lahti L-39 The Lahti L-39 is a Finnish 20 mm anti-tank rifle used during the Second World War. It had excellent accuracy, penetration and range, but its size made transportation difficult. It was nicknamed "Norsupyssy" ("Elephant Gun"), and as tanks d ...

20 mm anti-tank rifle. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, production was decentralized to Seppälänkangas depot and SOK-owned factories in Vaajakoski. After the war in 1946, VKT was consolidated into the government-owned ''Valtion metallitehtaat'' conglomerate that became

Valmet Valmet Oyj is a Finnish company and a developer and supplier of technologies, automation systems and services for the pulp, paper and energy industries. Valmet has over 200 years of history as an industrial operator. Formerly owned by the S ...

in 1951 and the unit was named just Tourula factory. The factory still produced sport and hunting rifles, but the main focus shifted to building industrial machines and

tractor A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most commo ...

s. Finally, Valmet's Tourula factory was merged with

SAKO Sako or SAKO may refer to: People with the surname * Bakary Sako (born 1988), French-born Malian footballer * Hygerta Sako, Albanian beauty pageant contestant * Louis Raphaël I Sako (born 1948), Iraqi cleric, head of the Chaldean Catholic Church * ...

to form Sako-Valmet Oy in 1986. Production in Tourula ended in the late 1990s.

References

Defunct firearms manufacturers Firearm manufacturers of Finland Defence companies of Finland 1926 establishments in Finland Defunct manufacturing companies of Finland {{Finland-company-stub