Finnish Machinery Tenders Written So Only One Maker's Machine Fits, Yle Finds

Finnish municipalities and parishes are tendering tractors and small loaders with requirements so narrow that one maker's machine fits, and sometimes the wording is lifted from that maker's brochure. That is the finding of a Yle investigation published on 25 September, which compared ten procurement notices from 2025 and 2026 with suppliers' product sheets. In six of the ten, only one manufacturer's machine met the criteria. A procurement specialist and lawyer told Yle that "sham tenders" (kulissikilpailutus) are possible in Finland and that such practice is always discriminatory and against the Procurement Act.

Quick answer: Finnish procurement law prohibits requirements that unjustifiably restrict competition. A narrow specification can be lawful when the task needs it. What Yle documents is buyers copying one supplier's feature list into the specification. The Market Court has overturned awards for restricting competition, the specialist said.

The investigation in five numbers

• 10 procurement notices from 2025 and 2026 were examined, chosen because their criteria appeared to restrict competition
• 6 of them could be met by only one manufacturer's machine; 3 by two; 1 by none
• 6 industry managers told Yle the requirements can be met by a single supplier; Yle withheld most names because of the effect on their livelihoods
• €60,000 excluding VAT is the national threshold at or above which most goods and services must be tendered under the Procurement Act (Section 25); €150,000 for works
• 300,000 versus 100,000 euros is one dealer's example of the overspend when a tender is written for one machine

What Yle found in the notices

The clearest cases are copied text. Yle found that a sentence from a document by Avant Tecno, the Ylöjärvi maker of compact loaders, describing "control of working hydraulics and hydraulics by mechanical levers and by electric buttons on the joystick", appears word for word in Joroinen parish's request for a small loader. The same notice required the driver's seat to be on the front frame of the machine, which Yle says only Avant Tecno and the Italian maker Multione build. The tender request, published on Hilma on 6 August with an estimated value of €75,000, lists both among its mandatory structural requirements, alongside an articulated frame, an offset telescopic boom and a turning radius of at most 1,240 mm inside and 2,780 mm outside.

Other requirements had no obvious link to the work. The city of Rauma asked for a tractor that was black, though not as an absolute requirement, and asked bidders to price repainting.

In a third case the chosen machine did not meet the stated requirements. Hamina parish advertised for a cemetery tractor that could tow a trailer, then chose an Avant Tecno work machine that by law may not tow one. After a complaint from the dealer Solis Invest the procurement was suspended and re-run without the trailer requirement, and the parish bought an Avant Tecno machine after the revised competition.

Yle also reports that Avant Tecno has written guidance for public buyers on how to set criteria so that its machine is the sure winner, with a list of features the buyer should include. The company's chief executive, Jani Käkelä, said he had not known the sheet existed before Yle asked, that one was found when he enquired, and that "a few things could perhaps have been put a little more softly". Yle notes that Käkelä himself takes a critical view of brochure text being copied into tender requests.

What the law says

Section 3 of the Procurement Act (hankintalaki) requires buyers to treat suppliers equally and without discrimination, and to act openly and proportionately. Section 65 adds that advice from outside parties may be used in planning a procurement, "but the use of advice may not lead to favouring a particular supplier or otherwise distorting competition".

For procurements above the EU thresholds (€216,000 excluding VAT for municipal goods and services from January 2026), Section 71 says the tender requirements must give tenderers equal opportunities and "may not unjustifiably restrict competition". They may not name a manufacturer, brand or product type in a way that favours or excludes certain suppliers. Such a reference is allowed only exceptionally, where the object cannot otherwise be described precisely enough, and must then carry the words "or equivalent" (tai vastaava).

For purchases between the national and EU thresholds, chapter 11 applies instead, with Section 3's principles and a duty to write the request so that comparable tenders can be given (Section 104).

Tapio Lahtinen, a procurement specialist and lawyer at the consultancy PTC Services, told Yle that tight requirements can turn out to be justified, for instance where a machine is bought for an unusual task. The law does not oblige the buyer to publish reasons for its criteria, he said. Restrictive requirements still need a justification. Even a colour requirement may have grounds: a cemetery may not want garish machines, and a machine can be repainted.

Copying from a brochure is different. Where market solutions differ widely and the buyer lacks experience, Lahtinen said, text may be copied from one supplier's product description in a hurry; combining several suppliers' descriptions can even specify a product that does not exist. Copying "can quickly become discriminatory and competition-restricting".

Avant's guidance sheet seemed to him mostly proper, since a company may market its products, but a buyer may not use such a list as its own criteria.

What the buyers and the maker say

Rauma's procurement manager Vesa Tomminen told Yle no award decision had been made in the tractor case, that the criteria came from the city's waste management plant and there was "no single reason" for the black colour, and said the city might need to review the criteria afterwards. A procurement that attracts only one bid has failed, he said. Käkelä of Avant Tecno recognised the situation in which no real competition arises: "it shows, and we are certainly often seen there, because we are the market leader in machines of this size". The company markets actively at trade fairs, runs demonstrations and set up its own sales organisation a few years ago.

What is still open

Yle's sample was chosen for apparent restriction, so it says nothing about how common the practice is. Yle does not report a court ruling on any of these procurements; Lahtinen's reference is to Market Court decisions in general. Rauma's tractor decision was pending. Whether any supplier in the article will take a case to the Market Court is not reported.

What to do now

• Specification reads like a brochure? Compare it line by line with the market leader's product sheet; a copied sentence is a warning sign worth raising with the buyer.
• Requirement with no link to the task? Ask the buyer in writing, before the deadline, why it is there; Yle's sources say this sometimes leads to a suspension and a rewrite.
• Lost to a machine that does not meet the notice's own terms? The Hamina case shows a complaint can stop the award. The remedies are a correction request to the buyer, an appeal to the Market Court, or both. An appeal must normally be filed within 14 days of receiving the decision with its appeal instructions, and a correction request does not stop that clock (Sections 134 and 147).

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