Image: Irene Stachon / Lehtikuva

Finland's most-valuable brands in 2017 (percentage change year-on-year, last year's rank) 1. Nokia 4,374 billion euros (+56 %, 1) 2. Kone 1,465 billion euros (+23 %, 2) 3. Kesko 880 million euros (-1 %, 4) 4. Elisa 857 million euros (+17 %, 6) 5. If 853 million euros (-13 %, 3) 6. Valio 564 million euros (-24 %, 5) 7. Fortum 533 million euros (+10 %, 8) 8. OP Bank 431 million euros (+30 %, 10) 9. DNA 338 million euros (-17 %, 9) 10. Nokian Tyres 306 million euros (new) Source: Brand Finance

Telecommunications company Nokia maintains its lead as the most valuable brand in Finland, according to a new brand value ranking from the UK firm Brand Finance.

Lift and escalator maker Kone comes in second, and the Kesko chain of retail stores has jumped from fourth place to third.

"Some people might be surprised at Nokia's achievement, taking into account the company's struggle on the smartphone front. The brand's recovery is really quite a success story," says Brand Finance's marketing and communications executive Maria Temporal.

The British firm estimated the Nokia brand is worth 4.4 billion euros, up from 2.8 billion one year ago. This improvement is still just a pale reflection of Nokia in its heyday, however, as in 2008 the mobile phone giant's brand was worth 22.5 billion euros, the ninth largest in the world at the time.

Kone's brand was valued at 1.5 billion euros (up from last year's 1.2 billion euros), while the rest of Finnish brands to make the list were valued in the hundreds of millions of euros.

Nokian Tyres is a newcomer

The largest drop in brand value in Finland was assigned to dairy company Valio. It lost one quarter of its value, due to many factors, among them Russian sanctions, charges of market position abuse and an over-supply of dairy products on the global scale.

"The entire dairy industry had troubles, and this reflected on Valio," Temporal says.

The only new entrant in the Finnish top ten was Nokian Tyres, a brand that is valued by the British firm at 300 million euros.

Brand Finance was established in 1996, and specializes in the evaluation of brand value. The company currently has operations in 20 countries.