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The roots of Mycelium 🇫🇮
KÄÄPÄ Biotech’s CEO Eric Puro started cultivating mushrooms in his backyard in 2014, but like all important stories from Finland, this also begins from a sauna:
KÄÄPÄ started in 2016 when Eric invited his friend over for sauna, who brought a mycologist friend, Lorin von Longo-Liebenstein. Those long fungi discussions between löyly (steam) and avanto (hole in the ice) evolved into working together, and notching up Eric’s mushroom cultivation into a whole new level. Soon a long time friends Henri Lokki and Seppo Riikonen joined the co-founders.
The very first mushroom growing trials were done in Seppo and Arja’s kitchen and garage. Shortly after that, marketing expert Otso Mursula joined the group and brought in his commercial expertise from the mushroom product industry. The founders began growing mushrooms together and developing the company around the idea of mushroom biotechnology.
The Farm
Since then, the thousand log mushroom farm steadily expanded into 20,000 log medicinal mushroom cultivation. At the outdoor mushroom farm, we learned from nature what mushrooms need for their growing conditions. The experience gained from our outdoor farm taught us which environmental factors contribute to creating the most potent mushrooms full of the Compounds of Interest.
Now our outdoor mushroom farm serves as our research and development laboratory. Today we are utilizing all the knowledge that we have gained there and putting it into practice at our indoor mushroom growing facilities. We are mimicking natural conditions to create the most potent products sustainably and on a larger scale.
Growing Mushrooms
We use the same Finnish birch substrate for the mushrooms as we use at the farm. Finland has cleanest air and water ever measured, and the clean forests ensure that our mushrooms are eating the healthiest and cleanest food – the birch trees. The substrate is FSC and/or PEFC certified for our commitment to sustainable forest practices. Based on our experience from the farm, we are controlling the growing conditions, such as the temperature, humidity, O₂ and C0₂-levels, light and added stress factors to produce mushrooms with the highest levels of the Compounds of Interest.
KÄÄPÄ Forest
KÄÄPÄ Forest is a subdivision, which promotes versatile use of forests and the forest cultivation of chaga. KÄÄPÄ Forest is managing the largest chaga cultivation network in the world. Because chaga grows very slowly and is being overharvested in the world, we have stepped in to tackle this problem by starting large scale chaga cultivation. Today, KÄÄPÄ Forest grows chaga around Finland in the continuously growing network area which is currently over 200 hectares in size.
Working closely with forest owners enables a truly transparent growing environment for our mushroom production. It is important for us to change the scenario from our Nordic forests being cut down for the use of the paper industry – instead we are supporting cultivation of medicinal mushrooms in our local forests. More information in Finnish on KÄÄPÄ Forest website.
