13/04/2007

Finland’s largest exhibitor Finnkino, with subsidiaries in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, has just inaugurated a seven-screen cinema complex in Raunas, Lithuania’s second largest city with some 400,000 inhabitants.

”We are proud to export Finnish movie theatre expertise. Our expansion to Kaunas continues our successful operations in Lithuania”, said Timo Mänty, managing director of Finnkino. The 20 year-old Finnish company, owned by the Rautakirja Group, now operates three cinemas in Lithuania for a total of 5,256 seats.

Its two other multiplexes (an 11-screen complex owned by Finnkino and an eight-screen theatre with a long-term rental agreement) are located in Vilnius. The three cinemas are run by UAB Cine Forum, a Finnkino subsidiary in Lithuania.

In the other two Baltic States, Finnkino owns two cinemas with 16 screens in the Latvian capital of Riga, and four cinemas with 18 screens in the Estonian cities of Tallinn, Narva and Tartu.

In Finland, Finnkino has 18 cinemas with 90 screens in 10 cities. The number of viewers in Finnkino's 27 cinemas in 2006 totalled over eight million, approximately half of which were outside Finland.

Since 1994, Finnkino has been part of the Rautakirja Group, which in turn was acquired by the SanomaWSOY media group in 2003. Apart from its theatrical exhibition activities, Finnkino also imports and distributes films for video/DVD sales and for cinema release in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.