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A former Soviet airbase, an hour east of the Estonian capital of Tallinn, is possibly not the first place you'd go to when looking for a materials handling success story, but in the town of Tapa, that's precisely what you'll find.
The Tapa Mill is a 4.5 hectares site processing 63,000 cubic metres of wood a year, mostly grown in Russia for eventual sale to local Estonian businesses, as well as the Benelux countries, Germany and France.
It would be difficult to imagine a more dramatic change in fortunes for what was once one of the largest airbases in the Baltics and home to the Soviet Voyska-PVO, or Air Defence Corp.
The Soviets were quick to exploit the town's important rail links, constructing a huge crane for unloading weapons, a feature which attracted the mill's MD, Kalle Valdlo, to the site.
"The rail link is important," says Kalle, "with 70 percent of our timber coming in from Russia. The crane too is very strong, but no-one gave much thought to operator comfort - or safety for that matter!"
Estonia itself was one of the first former Soviet republics to break away, with organised mass dissent in 1987, when the government demanded autonomy.
Until then, according to Tapa's mayor, Soviet pilots at the airbase, judged on how many hours they flew by how much fuel they used, dug pipes into the ground and poured the kerosene for their fighters down into the water table, making the water undrinkable. So much kerosene went into the drinking water in fact, that after the Russians pulled out, the town was able to pump up the groundwater and burn it in their power plant to heat the town.
You get the impression that a few transportation difficulties wouldn't stop the Estonians one bit.
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