SAKO, Limited is a Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 firearm

Firearm

A firearm is a weapon that launches one, or many, projectile at high velocity through confined burning of a propellant. This subsonic burning process is technically known as deflagration, as opposed to supersonic combustion known as a detonation. In older firearms, the propellant was typically...

 manufacturer located in Riihimäki

Riihimäki

Riihimäki is a town and municipality in the south of Finland, about north of Helsinki and southeast of Tampere. It is somewhat of a railway junction, since the railway tracks going from different parts of the nation to Helsinki merge there. Sako, Ltd...

.

It was formed on 1 June 1927 from the Suojeluskuntain Yliesikunnan Asepaja (Civil Guard Supreme Staff Gun Works) and moved from Helsinki

Helsinki

Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...

 to Riihimäki. In 1987, state-owned Valmet

Valmet

' was a Finnish state-owned conglomerate. Valmet was formed in 1951, when the state of Finland decided to group their various factories working on war reparations to the Soviet Union under one company...

 and SAKO fused into SAKO-VALMET, with ownership split evenly between Nokia

Nokia

Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki...

 and Valmet. After several organizational shifts in state ownership, the SAKO name remained for the privately owned gun- and cartridge-producing company located in the cities of Riihimäki

Riihimäki

Riihimäki is a town and municipality in the south of Finland, about north of Helsinki and southeast of Tampere. It is somewhat of a railway junction, since the railway tracks going from different parts of the nation to Helsinki merge there. Sako, Ltd...

 and Jyväskylä

Jyväskylä

Jyväskylä is the capital of Central Finland and the largest city on the Finnish Lakeland, north-east of Tampere and north of Helsinki, on northern coast of lake Päijänne. The city has been continuously one of the most rapidly growing cities in Finland since World War II. The city is surrounded...

 (former Valmet factory in Tourula, which was later closed).