Former Finnish Navy flagship *Pohjanmaa* decommissioned after decades of service
The former Finnish Navy minelayer Pohjanmaa, which later served as the hydrographic survey vessel Pohjanmeri, has been decommissioned and transferred to Millog Marine & Power’s Teijo shipyard in Salo for dismantling. Arctia, the state-owned company responsible for the vessel in its later years, announced that no suitable new use could be found for the ship, despite efforts to explore alternative purposes.
Arctia states that the vessel’s materials and reusable components will be recovered and recycled during the dismantling process. In a press release, the company noted that the end of Pohjanmeri’s lifecycle "marks the conclusion of one service phase and the transition of materials to new applications" (Iltalehti).
The vessel spent a decade as Arctia’s survey ship, conducting seabed mapping in the Baltic Sea, the Barents Sea, and the North Sea (Yle). Before its transfer to Arctia in 2016, Pohjanmaa had been withdrawn from naval service in 2013 after facing potential scrapping.
Originally built by Wärtsilä’s Helsinki shipyard and completed in 1979, Pohjanmaa served in the Finnish Navy for over 30 years as both a flagship and a training vessel (Iltalehti). The ship gained international attention in 2011 when it participated in the EU’s anti-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia, where it helped protect food shipments to the war-torn country (Yle).