Jan 27, 2005. /Lesprom Network/. Raute Corporation has established a maintenance company in St. Petersburg, Russia. A subsidiary, Raute Service LLC, is wholly owned by Raute. The new company offers spare parts and maintenance services to Raute’s Russian customers. The new company will start operations early 2005. Traditionally Raute’s market position as technology supplier for the wood panel industry is strong in Russia. Therefore, the volume of installed machines is considerable in Russia. The Russian plywood industry is strongly developing and the export is growing steadily. The importance of troublefree operation in the production is increasing. With the local maintenance company Raute will enhance the availability, quality and cost efficiency of spare part supply and maintenance services. Raute Service LLC will start at the beginning of February by resources of a Finnish technical specialist and Russian service technicians. The operation will be at full scale at the beginning of April. The target of Raute Service LLC is to achieve net sales of one million euros from 2006 on. As until now, the sales of new machines and projects Raute carries out from Finland.