Ben Tardif is a Cana­di­an play­ing for the Kär­pät ice hock­ey team in Finland’s top pro­fes­sion­al hock­ey league. He moved to Oulu last sum­mer with his wife. “One of the best things about liv­ing in Oulu is the safe­ty. I can walk every­where at any time of the day,” Ben says. Watch our video for Ben’s inspir­ing sto­ry!

Star­tups com­pet­ed at the Polar Bear Pitch­ing event this year in quite wet con­di­tions at Värt­tö Beach. The win­ner was Finnish Acous­pin, who have com­mer­cial­ized nanofiber pro­duced with ultra­sound. The nanofibers can be uti­lized in many ways in man­u­fac­tur­ing and health­care.

The City of Oulu and French com­pa­ny Ver­so Ener­gy have signed a co-oper­a­tion agree­ment aim­ing to build a hydro­gen pro­cess­ing plant in Oulu. Ver­so Ener­gy intends to con­struct a plant with a year­ly pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty of 80 000 tonnes of e‑SAF. The esti­mat­ed val­ue of the project is €1.4 bil­lion, and it is expect­ed to cre­ate 250 jobs.

Dri­ven by the desire for a more peace­ful life, supe­ri­or edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties for their four chil­dren, and the allure of Finland’s renowned hap­pi­ness index, Jose Vargh­ese and his wife embarked on a jour­ney to forge a new life.

The City of Oulu is part of the “Wel­come Home” cam­paign, a joint ini­tia­tive by Fin­land’s six largest cities to encour­age immi­grants to use the cities’ ser­vices that sup­port inte­gra­tion. The ser­vices help with adapt­ing to Finnish soci­ety, lan­guage learn­ing, and find­ing a job.

The cities of Oulu, Fin­land, and Sendai, Japan, recent­ly renewed their coop­er­a­tion agree­ment for anoth­er five years. The part­ner­ship will lever­age the strengths of both cities to explore new oppor­tu­ni­ties in ICT, health­care, cir­cu­lar econ­o­my, and print­ed elec­tron­ics.