On Kumera Corporation

It's important that I don't get stuck in some rut where my only business blog posts have to do with biometrics and Foursquare. (Hmm...fingerprint authenticated check-ins...) So I decided that I'd write about Kumera Corporation. Why Kumera? Because I have a Kumera mousepad. (Long story.)

Kumera is a worldwide corporation, headquartered in Finland with locations in Finland, Norway, Austria, and China. It describes itself as "a worldwide marketer of manufactured products and engineering services." It is organized into three divisions:

The Power Transmissions Group, established in 1945 and boasting the global presence outlined above.

The Technology portion of the business, which offers products such as copper and nickel smelters and copper concentrate steam dryers.

The Foundries portion, which produces steel and iron industrial castings.

Now you may understand these businesses, but I sure don't - I'm a software guy, not a hardware guy. So it's helpful to know that the Kumera Steam Dryer has its own website, steamdryer.com. (So if you want that domain name, you can't have it.)

The website even proclaims the benefits of the Kumera Steam Dryer, so if you're looking for a steam dryer, consider these:

Elimination of wear and clogging in the steam tubes, due to rotation of drum and steam tubes together

Low maintenance costs due to elimination of wear and long maintenance intervals

Increased production output due to high availability

Low weight of heaviest element to be moved during maintenance results savings in overhead crane investment and in steel structure

Minimum space requirement and clean operation

And these are only a few of the benefits. More here.

Now Kumera is obviously going to brag about itself, but things are better when others brag on you. And the Kumera Steam Dryer has received praise from the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy:

In primary copper smelters, the received copper concentrate and other materials contain a certain amount of moisture, ranging from six to 14 per cent. Moisture in wet concentrate has a negative effect on the performance of the smelting furnaces when it is fed directly to the furnaces, namely increasing the energy consumption and the off-gas flow.

There are several drying technologies available for drying copper concentrate, varying from direct heated rotary dryers and flash dryers to indirect heated steam dryers. Application of steam dryers has changed the drying process for copper smelters. Produced from a waste heat boiler, steam as heating medium enables plant-wide heat utilisation. Fossil fuel used from outside sources to remove water is no longer required and the combustion chamber is not required.

In addition special attention has been paid to overcome the known problems of pollution emissions, excessive wear, clogging and frequent maintenance. The Kumera steam dryer is featured with many advantages based on principal improvements in reducing tube element wear and increasing drying efficiency. Thus, it has been considered as the first choice for those smelters where steam is available.


While I realize that most of my readers don't have a lot of wet copper lying around, I hope that this post - a little out of the ordinary for me, I admit - has helped to keep you informed.

In the future, look for me to write a post on South American psychological centers.