Finnish ice breaker Sisu 2. Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
The United States and Finland are in the process of agreeing on a major icebreaker deal. It would involve a total of 11 icebreakers.
President Alexander Stubb and Prime Minister Petteri Orpo have struck a preliminary deal with President Donald Trump that the United States would order four icebreakers from Finland. In addition, seven would be built in the United States.
According to information from the Reuters news agency, the entire order would be worth 6.1 billion dollars, or about five billion euros.
It is not yet clear how the price will be divided between the icebreakers to be built in Finland and the United States, but roughly speaking, four icebreakers would mean a pot of two billion euros for Finland.
Four Icebreakers To Be Built In Finland
Speaking to reporters in Parliament, Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen calls the day “very important.”
A truly significant agreement, and it is true that as many as four of these icebreakers will be built in Finland.
The icebreakers will be used by the US Coast Guard. According to Reuters’ White House sources, the first icebreaker would be delivered by 2028. According to the source, the total value of the deal would be approximately 6.1 billion dollars.
According to Helsingin Sanomat, two icebreakers will be ordered from Helsinki and two from Rauma.
Finland’s Biggest Deals
Orders of this magnitude do not come to Finnish industry too often.
There is only one clear point of comparison for the pot.
The world’s largest cruise ships built at the Meyer shipyard in Turku, for example the Icon of the Seas cruise ship, cost the customer 1.7 billion euros.
Other orders of a similar size concern systems, not just a single product.
Nokia received a massive 5G network order from India last year. The state Finnvera provided a credit guarantee of 1.5 billion euros for it – one of the largest in its history.
Valmet announced an order worth over a billion euros a year ago. At that price, an entire pulp mill will be built in Brazil.
Wärtsilä receives orders worth 200-300 million euros annually, for example for battery storage for electricity, but a significant part of the components in these come from China. Wärtsilä’s own engines, built in Finland, received a large order in the United States in the summer for a data center: 15 engines will cost around 200 million euros, according to an analyst estimate.
The Best Economic News In 2025
Compared to these sizes, the one-time order for four icebreakers is the best economic news in a long time.
Division Of The Work Questionable
But there is still a big open question.
Will the deal with the United States follow the Canadian model?
The icebreaker ordered from Canada, which is currently being welded at the Helsinki shipyard, will only be built in Finland for a third of its value, and the majority of the ship’s value will be made in Canada. According to Canadian media, the value of the ship is two billion euros, so the share remaining in Finland could be approximately 600 million euros.
The order for four icebreakers now confirmed in Washington is an exceptionally large case in Finnish industrial history, but the decisive factor is how the work will be divided with the United States.
Will the icebreakers be built in Finland from start to finish this time, or will the work now be shared with the United States, as is done with Canada.
Sharing the work – and the value of the order – would not be a surprise.
The Icebreaker Cooperation Agreement (ICE Pact) signed by Finland, the United States and Canada last November is precisely aimed at cooperation.
The purpose of the agreement is to deepen cooperation in building icebreakers in each country by sharing expertise, information and know-how. With that, Finland managed to sell its first icebreaker in history to North America – or to be precise, a third of it.
But even if some of the four icebreakers to be ordered would be built in the United States, the order would have a major impact on the industry’s prospects and employment in Finland. Shipbuilding employs a large part of the Finnish subcontracting chain – it is not, for example, about assembling Chinese components.
According to Valtonen, it is important for employment that many of the icebreakers are built in Finland.
Yes, this will have significant effects on the Finnish economy and employment. I would say that this is exactly the kind of glimmer of light that is needed at this time.
The news about the icebreakers is very big, and it also comes at a very good time. It gives some hope that the gloomy employment situation in Finland may finally turn for the better.
Major Impact On The Labor Market
Elina Andersson, CEO of the industry lobby group Meriteollisuusi, says that the employment impact of even one icebreaker order is calculated in “thousands of person-years.”
If we think in general terms that four icebreakers were ordered from Finland, then that would be hugely great news for us, would have major employment impacts and would be a great new reference for the Finnish maritime industry.
According to Andersson, the orders would bring a very wide range of jobs to Finland – in addition to actual shipbuilding, for example, in design, equipment manufacturing and a wide range of subcontractors.
We have a wide range of expertise – there is specialized expertise throughout the chain.
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