Two Finnish Companies, One Foundation

At the Tapiola Sports Park project in Espoo, Tieluiska Oy is using the ALLU PF 7+7 NextGen for efficient in-situ soil stabilization with deep dry mixing technology.
Case study

Tieluiska & ALLU at the Tapiola Sports Park

Tapiola, Espoo, Finland

Material Soft clay and post-glacial soils

Industry Construction, Infrastructure

Application Soil Stabilization

Function In-situ ground improvement for sports facilities, streets, parking areas, and water infrastructure.

Model ALLU PF 7+7 NextGen Pressure Feeder with column rigs for deep dry mixing

In Finland’s second-largest city, Tieluiska Oy is delivering one of the most ambitious recent public-space infrastructure projects: the northern section of the Tapiola Sports Park renovation. The work combines sports facilities, streets, water infrastructure, parking and green areas into a modern, accessible recreation hub for Espoo.

For the critical foundation works, Tieluiska is using a system it knows well: the ALLU Soil Improvement System with the PF 7+7 Pressure Feeder, paired with column rigs for deep dry mixing. The partnership between Tieluiska and ALLU Finland Oy – both Finnish – has developed over decades of site experience, direct feedback and practical support.

Tieluiska: half a century of Finnish infrastructure

Tieluiska Tikkanen & Yliniemi was founded in 1974, after the Tikkanen and Yliniemi brothers – both from Finnish railway-builder families – bought a Gradall slope-shaping machine advertised in Helsingin Sanomat. More than fifty years later, Tieluiska is a privately owned Finnish infrastructure builder with approximately 140 employees across earthworks, environmental construction, Torpanpiha® growing media production, and machinery and spare parts sales.

Roughly one third of the workforce has been with the company for more than ten years, giving Tieluiska deep institutional knowledge in streets, foundations, leisure areas, water infrastructure, parks, mass stabilisation and hydroseeding. That combination of infrastructure and landscaping experience is exactly what Tapiola Sports Park requires.

ALLU: 40 years of Finnish environmental engineering

ALLU was founded in 1985 in Pennala, Finland, as one of the country’s early environmental technology companies. It remains family-owned, with manufacturing, R&D and product development in Finland. From that base, ALLU operates internationally through subsidiaries in Sweden, Germany, the USA and China, plus a dealer network covering more than 30 countries; over 95% of turnover comes from exports.

ALLU’s range includes screening and crushing buckets for excavators and wheel loaders, and a complete soil improvement system for deep dry mixing: the ALLU Processor power mixer and the ALLU PF Pressure Feeder. Tapiola uses the latter system.

A partnership refined by real sites

Tieluiska has used ALLU’s soil stabilisation system across multiple projects, soil conditions, schedules and binder mixes. That makes the relationship more than a supplier–contractor transaction. Over hundreds of working days, feedback becomes detailed: how an interface behaves at -20 °C, where dust gathers on a track frame, and what binder feed looks like in wet glacial till versus dry sand.

This feedback loop is the principle behind the partnership: two companies, two long product life cycles and one demanding Finnish operating environment. Real ground conditions shape the next generation of ALLU equipment, and better equipment sharpens what Tieluiska can deliver to public clients.

Support matters as much as equipment. Because ALLU keeps manufacturing, R&D and product development at its Finnish headquarters, the people who develop the system remain close to the people who operate it. For Tieluiska, that responsiveness has been consistent: when a high-stakes urban project needs attention, the support comes from people who understand the application, the system and the shared history.

The project: Tapiola Sports Park, northern section

In 2024, the City of Espoo’s technical committee approved the renovation plans for the northern part of Tapiola Sports Park. Tieluiska was selected as main contractor for the €16.4 million package, running from October 2025 to October 2027. The scope includes:

  • New sports facilities: football pitches, a multi-purpose ground, neighbourhood exercise and play areas, a running straight, plus beach volleyball and basketball courts.
  • Streets and water infrastructure: renovation of Koivu-Mankkaantie; construction of Yhteispelintie, Yhteispelinkuja and Syöttäjänkuja; and two new roundabouts.
  • Parking and green areas: public parking integrated with parks and green spaces, connecting the site into one walkable, accessible whole.

The northern section also sits within the wider transformation of Tapiola Sports Park, which will later include a separate 6,000-seat UEFA Category 3 football stadium by Jatke Toimitilat. Tieluiska’s section is the foundational piece – literally the ground on which the rest of the area will be activated.

Why soil stabilisation was required

Like much of Espoo and the broader southern Finnish coastal zone, Tapiola sits on soft, often clay-rich post-glacial soils. Sports fields, traffic streets, parking areas and water infrastructure all need predictable ground so surfaces do not settle, pipes do not deflect, and the area performs for decades with minimal maintenance.

The conventional approach would be to excavate soft soil, haul it away and import suitable replacement material. On a €16.4 million urban project beside live sports halls, residential streets and existing infrastructure, that creates clear drawbacks: heavy truck traffic, disposal costs and environmental tracking, schedule dependence on truck cycles and aggregate availability, and extra carbon from haulage and imported materials.

Tieluiska chose a lower-impact route: stabilise the existing soil in place using the ALLU PF 7+7 Pressure Feeder with deep dry mixing column rigs.

How the ALLU PF 7+7 works

The ALLU PF 7+7 NextGen is a self-contained, track-driven, twin-tank pneumatic dry-binder delivery system. Its 2 × 7 m³ tanks allow continuous operation: while binder feeds from one tank, the other can be refilled. It operates at up to 10 bar (145 psi), with an adjustable feed rate of 3–15 kg per second, delivering binder up to 200 m horizontally and 30 m deep. The system is computer-controlled by ALLU DAC 2.1 and records numerical or graphical job-site data.

In Tapiola, column rigs drive a mixing tool into soft ground while dry binder – typically lime, cement or a cement-based blend – is pneumatically delivered through the rig and mixed into the soil column at depth. The result is a network of stabilised columns that act as load-bearing foundation elements without mass excavation.

Why in-situ dry mixing fits Tapiola

The benefits of stabilising soil in place using ALLU’s dry mixing system, rather than digging it out and replacing it, are particularly pronounced in tight, public, urban sites – and Tapiola is exactly that kind of site.

  • No mass haulage of soft soil: The existing ground stays where it is. There is no fleet of dump trucks running through the surrounding residential streets, no replacement aggregate being shipped in. On a sports-park renovation flanked by active facilities, the operational impact and the public-amenity impact both drop dramatically.
  • Reduction in binder consumption: The binding agent (cement, lime, or blends) is typically the most expensive single line item in any soil stabilisation or remediation project. With Dry mixing, the work uses less binder vs. wet slurry method or bucket mixing. Compared to bucket mixing, data from real project sites show that ALLU’s dry mixing system delivers a minimum 30% binder saving and up to 70% under optimal conditions. For a mid-sized project, that single difference can translate into hundreds of thousands of euros.
  • Dry binder vs wet slurry – precision over excess: Wet-slurry methods deliver binder mixed with water. To guarantee that every column reaches the required strength, the slurry method tends to over-dose: more binder is added because the wet delivery is harder to control with precision. Dry binder delivery via the PF 7+7’s computer-controlled, sealed, pneumatic system places exactly the dosage the design calls for at exactly the depth specified. Less binder used means lower material cost, lower CO₂ from cement production, and a more uniform stabilised column.
  • Same job in a fraction of the time: Dry mixing with ALLU Soil Stabilization System can complete the same stabilization work in up to one-eighth of the time required by traditional methods, and one ALLU machine can replace approximately five conventional excavators on a comparable mass-stabilisation task – with corresponding labour savings of around 75%. On a fixed-schedule public project, schedule certainty has direct commercial value.
  • Lower dust, fewer machines, safer site: Dry mixing through the PF 7+7’s enclosed pneumatic system produces less dust than open bucket-mixing approaches. Fewer machines on site means fewer people working around active equipment, lower fuel consumption, and a smaller traffic footprint inside the working area – important when the project is bordered by sports halls and public routes.
  • Verifiable quality, on the record: The DAC 2.1 control system records binder feed rate, depth, and column data continuously. For a city client (Espoo), that is auditable evidence that every stabilised column was constructed to specification – supporting acceptance, hand-over, and long-term maintenance documentation.

The big picture

Soil stabilisation is often won or lost on binder cost. Reducing binder use by 30–70% while delivering the same or better engineered ground performance is the largest economic lever in this type of work. Dry mixing with precise, computer-controlled feed is how that lever is pulled.

The Tapiola Sports Park project shows a practical Finnish way of building public infrastructure in dense urban environments: keep the existing ground in place where possible, stabilise it where needed, minimise truck movements through residential areas, document the work, and hand over a site that can perform for decades.

It also shows the value of long-term industrial relationships. Tieluiska, founded in 1974, and ALLU, founded in 1985, have worked together long enough that today’s equipment is partly shaped by operator feedback from earlier Finnish job sites. That feedback is visible in machine design, support responsiveness and the confidence with which Tieluiska can choose in-situ dry mixing for a high-visibility public project.

Long-term partnerships build better tools. Better tools build better cities.

See how this collaboration is turning soil improvement challenges into practical solutions from the video below.

PF 7+7 Pressure Feeder

The double tank ALLU Pressure Feeder PF 7+7 NextGen allows for continuous feeding and precise dosing of dry binders in soil improvement projects.

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    Efficient Trench Backfilling

    On-site screening reduces costs and improves efficiency in demanding mountain terrain.
    Case study

    Efficient Screening in Mountain Conditions

    Haute-Maurienne, France

    Material Excavated soil, trench backfill material, mixed and wet materials

    Industry Construction, Earthmoving, Infrastructure

    Application Trench backfilling and pipe bedding

    Function Screening, separating, mixing, and aerating material on-site

    Model ALLU DC 2-08

    HOW BEAUTIFUL THE MOUNTAIN IS

    There is no need to extract from nature what can simply be produced on site with a screening bucket, namely fine trench backfill material. For a mountain contractor from Haute-Maurienne like Yoan Bernard, screening excavated material directly on site is more than obvious, it is a necessity. After a first successful experience with a screening bucket mounted on his 10-ton spider excavator, he moved to a more compact model: an ALLU DC 2-08 Bucket weighing 275 kg for his 5-ton Kubota.

    For the commissioning, Yoan is operating the machine while Pierre Ratigner, workshop manager at Cimax, adjusts the hydraulic flow. While the manufacturer recommends a range of 20 to 40 l/min, for this 5.5-ton KX057-4 excavator the flow is set to 38 l/min. The maximum operating pressure is 200 bar and does not require any particular adjustment.

    For the operation of its bucket, as with its heavier models DL-series for excavators up to 12t, D-series for excavators up to 45t, ALLU has chosen a drive system where the first rotor is powered by a hydraulic motor, with transmission to the opposite side via a gear and a well-dimensioned metal chain.

    On the DC-series for compact excavators from 2 to 10 t, the same drive design is used with the integrated Transformer technology. This allows efficient screening regardless of the type of material: from hard and compact to soft and malleable, from dry to more or less wet and sticky.

    ALLU screens excavated material directly on site.
    Pierre, workshop manager at Cimax, is always present during commissioning to ensure optimal setup.

    THE SCREENING EXPERIENCE

    The main difference with the ALLU bucket lies in its fixed screening grid positioned above the rotors. This ensures that the loaded material always remains in contact with the grid. The blades pass through the grid and clean themselves automatically, which helps maintain:

    • optimal productivity
    • consistent particle size quality
    • reduced wear on the bearing housings, since the rotors are not in direct contact with the raw material.

    In addition, the bucket features special wear-resistant steel blades. They are individually replaceable because they are not welded, and are designed to mix the material effectively, break up lumps, aerate it, loosen it if wet, and ultimately allow only the fine fraction to pass through.

    ALLU offers different blade sizes for its TS screening rotors, the most frequent being 16mm to get a 0/20 material output. 8mm, 25mm and 35mm TS blades are also available to provide respectively 0/10, 0/30 and 0/40 output size. The TS system also offers the possibility to pair the blades easily to double the output fragment size.

    ALLU DC 2-08 screening bucket, in the Alps.

    EASY OPERATION

    Using the bucket is straightforward. Once the bucket is filled (capacity of 0.26 m³ for the DC 2-08), Yoan activates the rotor movement using a roller on his joystick. The rotation direction lifts the material upward.

    If a blockage occurs, for example if a blade is jammed by a stone, Yoan can reverse the rotation, since the ALLU bucket hydraulic line is double-acting.

    “The market offers quite a wide range of screening buckets. The advantage of the ALLU lies in the sizing of its structural steels and especially the quality of the weld seams — it’s industrial-grade. The blades are made of wear-resistant steel. What interests me most is a tool that performs reliably throughout its lifespan and guarantees efficient production, even when the material is wet,” explains Yoan.

    Here, the bucket is used to select materials in order to produce a finer fraction suitable for trench backfilling and pipe bedding.

    According to productivity calculations made by Nils from Cimax, the average daily output of this DC 2-08 screening bucket will be between 70 and 130 m³ per day. Many variables influence this: moisture content and the nature of the material. These estimated values are non-contractual.

    ALLU Bucket, Trench Backfilling in the Alps
    ALLU Bucket, Efficient Trench Backfilling

    This customer story was originally published by TP & Aménagements.