Finnish utilities: customers need to wake up to the competition

The end-user price for Finnish electricity customers has failed to track the fall in wholesale prices following last year's extremely high prices. The conditions that created the price peaks have now dissipated and customers need to be made more aware of this to help drive both switching and competition.

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Fortum: a helping hand from Birka

Taking full control of Sweden's Birka has countered Fortum's losses from lower oil and electricity prices. The company envisages E100 million a year in cost savings from synergies from 2004. With 1.36 million distribution customers, a strong bundled service strategy, and an expected 1-2% rise in Nordic energy consumption, Fortum is on track for a good 2002.

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Fortum: acquiring to focus on Nordic markets

Buying out Birka is part of Fortum's broader strategy to focus on the Nordic energy markets, as well as expanding in the heat and power segment. Fortum is also divesting its non-core businesses, and may make more acquisitions in the region. This matches the strategy of its main Nordic rival, Vattenfall, of focusing on energy supply in northern Europe.

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Nordic power: Nord Pool price critique highlights need for change

Criticism from a leading Finnish power player over Nord Pool pricing mechanisms has raised interesting issues in light of changing electricity market dynamics. Indeed, the advent of emissions trading brings the market's current pricing mechanism into question, and may signal the need for reform.

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Russian imports are a shrewd move for Sweden's MEUs

A newly formed consortium of 15 Swedish power users, known as Basel, has chosen to source its power from Russian imports rather than Swedish suppliers. As Datamonitor's Karl Lindstrom explains, this is a notable innovation in a power market that has been liberalized since 1996, and one that will be closely watched by power users elsewhere in Europe.

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Scandinavian electricity: a political blackout

With the lights going out in both Sweden and Denmark, politicians may now use this to serve their own political agendas. The reliability of the Scandinavian network has been exceptionally high, but one outage may spark debates that call into question not only energy policy and investment but also the closer integration of countries in Scandinavia and Europe.

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St1: shaking up the Scandinavian service station market

St1 has revived competition in the Scandinavian service station market with the acquisition of 198 sites. By the end of 2009 Datamonitor predicts that St1 will have a 6% volume share in Sweden and a 4% volume share in Norway, but making further inroads will be tough.

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Statoil: going it alone in forecourt retailing

Following a five year joint venture with Statoil [STO] in the ownership of fuel retailer Statoil Detaljhandel Skandinavia, grocery major ICA is now withdrawing from the partnership. As long as Statoil maintains supply arrangements with ICA and has used its alliance to learn important retailing lessons, this needn't hinder its development in the convenience sector.

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Swedish electricity: consumers pay the price of loyalty

In 2003 Swedish customers experienced markedly higher bills. Suppliers' response to consumer anger was to offer product options including contracts to domestic customers, enticing them to move off tariff. Offering contracts appears a wise move for suppliers, tying customers in at a price when wholesale prices are high, yet in the long term the development is commoditizing their proposition.

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Swedish forecourt stores: per site sales to break E1 million by 2007

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