The L461 has been very popular in Finland and Sweden, especially chambered for the. This cartridge was designed for and well suited to capercaille and black grouse hunting, a popular sport in Finland, Sweden and Norway. Sako developed the 7×33mm cartridge based on the 9×19mm Parabellum pistol cartridge, by making a longer case and "necking" the case down to 7 mm calibre (7.21 mm bullet diameter). The first civilian rifle bearing the Sako name was the L42 (Luodikko model 1942) chambered for the 7×33mm Sako cartridge, prototyped in 1942, and commercial production started after World War II. The company now is owned by Beretta Holdings. After several organizational shifts in state ownership, the SAKO name remained for the privately owned gun- and cartridge-producing company located in the cities of Riihimäki and Jyväskylä (former Valmet factory in Tourula, which was later closed). The Valtion Kivääritehdas (VKT) opened at Tourula, Jyväskylä in 1925 had become a part of Valmet in the 1950s and in 1987, the state-owned Valmet and SAKO fused into SAKO-VALMET, with ownership split evenly between Nokia and Valmet. The firearms manufacturer Tikkakoski, which owned the Tikka brand, was merged into SAKO in 1983. Sako started exporting pistol cartridges to Sweden in the 1930s and continued manufacturing submachinegun cartridges through World War II. The Suojeluskuntain Yliesikunnan Asepaja moved from Helsinki to an ammunition factory in Riihimäki on 1 June 1927 and reorganized as SAKO in the 1930s.
The rifle repair shop became financially independent of the civil guard in 1921. In 1919, two years after Finland declared independence from the Russian Empire, the Suojeluskuntain Yliesikunnan Asepaja ( Civil Guard Supreme Staff Gun Works) opened in a former Helsinki brewery to repair private arms and recondition Russian military rifles for Finnish service. It is now owned by the Italian firearms holding company Beretta Holding. SAKO, Limited ( Suojeluskuntain Ase- ja Konepaja Oy, Civil Guard Gun- and Machiningworks Ltd) is a Finnish firearm manufacturer located in Riihimäki.