The pasta machine blew up the bank 30 years ago

Everything started from the wife’s wish. Cristina Moborg asked her husband Rolf Moborg to bring a pasta machine and a mocha pan from Italy as gifts from the Milan fair.

The spouse did not bring either, but instead their kitchenware importing company Heirol had been represented by the products in question.

It was the beginning of the 1990s, when nobody talked about pasta, but everyone cooked macaroni.

– Those two didn’t miraculously go on sale then. Especially the pasta machine, Rolf Moborg recalls.

Then something happened. Suddenly Kiteen’s Hankkija agricultural store started ordering pasta machines.

First, 12-24 pieces were ordered there, then a new order came, which already had 48 pieces. That’s when Moborg, who runs Heiroli together with his father, started to wonder what it was all about.

– My father called Kitee and directly asked what you have come up with when the people of Kitee are so enthusiastic about making pasta.

– On the other end of the phone, they answered that this is not a pasta machine. This is a Karelian pie machine.

Hankkija, who works in agriculture Erkin the neighbor had set the pasta machine on fire. The neighbor had thought about what to do with it and then he had realized: Karelian pie crusts.

The idea had been so good that he had asked Erkink to see how easy it was to roll Karelian pies with the machine. So Erkki started selling Karelian pie machines.

Information about the Karelian pie machine spread quickly by word of mouth, and Hankkija received daily calls to mail such a machine all over Eastern Finland.

– My father was excited by Erki’s story, that this should be shown on TV: Karelian pies are made with an Italian pasta machine. I called Mtv3’s Huomenta Suomen Kati Napa and she wanted them on her program.

So Erkki was flown to Helsinki and on morning television.

– An explosion followed. On the same day, 4,000 pasta machines had already been sold by 12 o’clock.

After that, only phones were answered at Heiroli: “Yes, we have Karelian pie machines”.

During a year and a half, about 40,000 pasta machines were sold. The number was so large that even the Italians wondered what was happening there. No other country had gone to so many planes in such a short time.

They imagined that the machines from Finland would be sold to Russia.

– The pasta machine was a stroke of luck for us. Thanks to that, we got into the central stores and started to grow.

According to Moborg, a customer may still come to the store and ask if this is the machine used to make Karelian pies.

However, nowadays pasta machines are sold more for making pasta than Karelian pies.