The Story of Jarcrac

What started as a welding hobby in 1998, turned into a line of products designed for forestry professionals who want to work with the machines the whole year-round, no matter the season, while keeping the forest and the ground in healthy shape.

1998-2010

From a Welding Hobby to a Product Family

The first machine was made for recreational purposes in 1998 in a small garage with a self-welded frame, and many of the transmission parts were used ones.

Picture: The first Jarcrac machine made in 1998. It was actually called “JAME” before the Jarcrac name was taken into use.

2010-2014

Forestry Machines with Cranes

The company founder, Jari Konttila continued this side-hobby until 2010 when he started producing the machines as a business and as a sole trader. Those machines had 2 tracks and the frames were welded by hand. At this point the majority of the components were new, but the suspension system was taken from the Bandvagn 202 tracked military vehicle and some machines still had older Mercedes Benz engines.

In a few years, the products shifted from 2-tracked carrier machines and snow groomers to forest machines for private landowners. In 2014, the first machine abroad was sold to Latvia.

2014-2020

Export Operations Are Growing

As soon as more of the machines started going to exporting, the customer base shifted more towards professional use, and that’s also where product development started accelerating a lot through increased field-testing, because more machines were working long hours in tougher conditions than before. In 2015, the factory was moved to larger facilities and the Jarcrac forest machine model was completely redesigned.

The good features from the previous machine models were kept in the new design and a large part of the improvements were made based on customer feedback. At that time, the self-designed rocking bogies, the new frame, and the new cabin were introduced, and parts such as the powerline components were updated to stronger models. Nowadays most of the machines go to forestry professionals with the biggest markets being Central Europe and Finland.

2020-2023

Factory Expansion

After moving into the current facilities, the factory has been expanded and developed at a steady rate and now the factory’s size is around 1300 m².

Ever since the beginning, the focus points in our product mindset have been forest friendliness, simplicity, and reliability. This has resulted in low ground pressure machines that are strong, but easy and cost-effective to maintain. Currently there are around 200 Jarcrac machines working all around the world with Canada and Japan being the furthest locations.