Tech company Insta eyes land mine production once Finland quits treaty

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Finnish technology conglomerate Insta said on Friday it is interested in producing anti-personnel land mines in Finland once the Finnish government leaves the international mine ban treaty.

NATO member Finland said on Tuesday the Nordic country plans to quit the Ottawa Treaty, a global convention banning anti-personnel land mines, citing a long-term danger from neighbouring Russia to all of Europe. Insta is one of the first companies to signal interest in producing land mines that have been broadly banned by the treaty.

By leaving the treaty, Finland, which guards NATO’s longest border with Russia, could start stockpiling land mines. Poland and the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said last month they would also withdraw from the 1997 Ottawa convention due to threats posed by Russia.

Insta, a private automation and defence technology company, said it would consider extending its strategic partnership with the Finnish Defence Forces to include land mines.

“If the decision is taken that we as a nation permit land mines again, of course we want to look from that point forward how we can be involved in the context of our strategic partnership,” Insta CEO Tapio Kolunsarka told Reuters, adding that the company has not yet made a decision on land mine production.

Kolunsarka said Insta has not decided if it would sell land mines to countries beyond Finland.

“Of course, if you look at our steel business, it is international, but it is too early to speculate on these things,” he said.

“If we think about the development work we have done over the past years for technologies to replace land mines, of course there are synergies in our expertise.”

Insta has been developing a remotely-detonated “bounding mine” that springs into the air and fires projectiles at its target when triggered, which the Finnish army intended to use as an alternative to more than 1 million land mines Finland destroyed after joining the Ottawa Treaty in 2012.

Insta recently adapted its bounding mine into a flying weapon it named “Steel Eagle” that releases thousands of steel balls from a drone, hitting an area of 2,000 square metres (21,528 square feet) at once.

Insta developed the Steel Eagle with Ukrainian partners, the company told Reuters earlier.

Former U.S. President Joe Biden last year approved the provision of anti-personnel land mines to Ukraine.

The United Nations has condemned countries’ plans to exit the treaty, calling it “a key humanitarian disarmament treaty that saves lives.”

“Withdrawing from the Anti-Personnel Landmine Convention would weaken the established norm against the use of anti-personnel landmines and reverse critical humanitarian advancements,” the UN said in a statement.

(Reporting by Anne Kauranen in Helsinki, additional reporting by Essi Lehto; Editing by Rod Nickel)