Simple and productive tools for modern forestry. Designed by operators, for operators.

TMK’S MISSION

THERE MUST BE A BETTER WAY!

It’s September 2009, and the temperature is rising in the forest in Hankasalmi, southern Finland. No, it’s not because the country is enjoying an Indian summer, but because entrepreneur Tenho Koponen’s blood is beginning to boil. The tree shear he bought earlier that year is broken yet again, and now Tenho has decided that enough is enough. There has to be a better and more efficient way to do forestry work! But there would be no sense in going back to the days of the chainsaw.

So, to solve his troubles, in the late fall of 2009 Tenho Koponen sets in his workshop to design and build a completely new tree shear with just one moving grapple arm. It had to be as simple, durable and efficient as possible, with a structure that minimises damage to trees that are to be left standing as well as minimising unproductive labour. Thus was born a prototype of the world’s first guillotine shear with just one moving grapple arm, the TMK 300. Success? Well, kind of; it lasted about half an hour when put to work in the forest. Back to the drawing board, then! After a bit more trial, error and improvement, Tenho had a shear on his machine that was surprisingly handy for thinning with a zero tail swing excavator.

Once he saw the benefits of his new invention in his own forest thinning work, Tenho realised that others might also need such a powerful shear. He called on his father-in-law Reijo, a retired designer, who soon set about measuring the new shear and sketching out the first draft for developing the design.

Tenho’s brother Mika, who is a design engineer and now employed full-time by TMK, put the duo’s sketches into digital form. In the spring of 2010, Tenho drove with his first version of the shear and the drawings for the developed model to Multia, a municipality in central Finland not too far from his home in Hankasalmi. His destination there was the contract machinery manufacturer Multimek. Before long, an agreement was made for the manufacture of five shears for testing. Videos of the emerging new product were posted on YouTube, and several energy wood contractors in Finland became interested in what would be a low-cost and user-friendly new type of shear.

Today, all TMK’s shears are manufactured in series at the company’s own factory in Hankasalmi. This allows fuller control over the manufacturing process – quality can be monitored more precisely, and increasingly tailored solutions can be developed for the needs of different market areas.

Improvements have of course been made along the way, but the basic design of TMK’s shears is still the same as it was when it first saw the light of day back in 2009. In other words, the song remains the same: the company offers heavy-duty shears that makes forestry management more productive and easier. But our product development never stands still: TMK Tree Shear is continuously developing new, even more user-friendly solutions that challenge current operating methods and models and bring further benefits for entrepreneurs.

TMK’s ambition is not only to provide high-quality innovations for forestry work, but also to lead the way in energy wood contracting, forest management and tree clearing.