In 2011, when I was still taking my first baby steps as an urban explorer, I spent the summer working in Southeastern Finland. That was when I found an old dairy plant mostly abandoned near a large highway.
Back then the place was in some use. The yard was clean, there were trailers and stuff, and it seemed as some kind of a storage facility. When I returned in 2020, the place seemed completely abandoned.
Built in the early 1950’s, this place was once Finland’s largest cheese dairy plant famous for its Emmental. But as the national dairy company started centralizing its operations, the place was shut down in 1989.
It looked a bit different than back in the days, though. It seemed like something was missing. And indeed there was. The highway passing it had been widened and the small rowhouse housing dairy workers but long since abandoned, had been demolished. But there was something else.
This was the first ever time I actually approached the place. It did seem abandoned, but at least one door had been replaced since the dairy activities ended. The demolished rowhouse was to my right.
If the place still was in use, the use wasn’t very active. An old Xantia is standing in the back yard.
I could now tell, what was missing. There was a chimney here nine years ago. It has been demolished, probably because it was in such a bad condition, that it had become a hazard.
The plywood on the windows and the broken windows upstairs tell their tale. This place is no longer in use. But I didn’t seem to find a way in.
I always thought, that it was a rather low building, but the truth was revealed behind it. It was huge. And it was also inaccessible. All possible entry points had been blocked, and the old dairy personnel building behind it was inhabited. There was no way in.
This building has always been my urbex dream. Whenever I get to enter it, I can consider my career as an urban explorer fulfilled. But today was not the day.