Heavy-duty workers & the importance of safe workwear
SF Port Service employees do strenuous work in demanding port conditions. Thanks to them, our supermarkets are stacked with fruits and other imported items. And what kind of workwear do the everyday superheroes wear?
The personnel of SF Port Service, founded in 2018, carry out physically strenuous work in demanding conditions at the Vuosaari Harbour in Finland.
Almost half of the value of Finnish foreign trade passes through the Port of Helsinki. This is evidenced by a long colourful row of containers at the Vuosaari Harbour. According to Sasu Forsström from SF Port Service, the containers and lorries passing through the harbour carry goods that are important to the Finnish industry, and similarly, Finnish goods are partly exported by sea:
– We at SF Port Service enable a wide range of jobs. For example, transporting crew to ships and mooring and disconnecting vessels are tasks that enable the crew and stevedores to do their jobs. We are a link in Finland’s logistics chain,” Forsström says.
Safe, visible and comfortable workwear – made by Lindström
SF Port Service’s workwear collection includes both summer and winter apparel designed for demanding conditions. In practice, the garments must be durable and weatherproof, as they are used in conditions ranging from 30°C heat to –30°C frost to pouring rain.
Suvi Strang from Lindström’s customer-specific workwear solutions team explains that SF Port Service’s workwear was designed to be easily visible, adaptable and protective in varying weather conditions. The designers also considered how the properties of the workwear would impact the overall load of strenuous work.
For example, the fabric of the certified stretch trousers is flexible. The trousers offer optimal, tested freedom of movement for demanding work requiring large motions, such as squatting and climbing. The collection’s coated and padded clothes are ideal for the Finnish winter, and their suitability for industrial textile maintenance has been meticulously tested in Lindström’s Koivuhaka laundry before deployment. According to Strang, the properties of the clothes are to a large extent due to innovative processing methods used at the laundry.
Strang says that the customer’s needs and the service model determine the workwear package. In the case of SF Port Service, both the challenges of the customer’s operating environment and the customer’s own wishes regarding the collection were taken into account at different stages of the design process. The work combined the expertise and wide-ranging experience of the Helsinki Sales team, Case Support team, basic product development, material procurement, and laundries.
