Raisio Group has been an important part of the Finnish dining table for 65 years, since wheat farmers in south western Finland founded Oy Vehnä Ab to mill and market their wheat. Raisio’s first mill came on stream on a Sunday in the autumn of 1942, giving rise to one of the company’s best-known brands: Sunnuntai, Finnish for Sunday. Production expanded to animal feed, malt, vegetable oil and margarine in the 1940s and 1950s, and the manufacturing of processed potato products began in Vihanti in the 1960s.

The Group’s chemical business got underway in the 1970s, leading to Raisio’s strong internationalisation in the 1990s. The company’s Chemical Division developed into an important international supplier of paper chemicals.

Raisio was listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange in 1989. In 1995 the Finnish markets saw the first product containing stanol ester, Raisio’s cholesterol-lowering Benecol margarine. Benecol is Raisio’s most significant innovation and a pioneer in functional products.