Union representative of SSSH Karlovac County Nikola Badovinac and regional representative of the Croatian Metalworkers’ Union Dragutin Vuljanić selected Adriadiesel for a public appearance in Karlovac as part of the ‘Solidarity Together’ action, a company that has been going through a Golgotha for 20 years, as Vuljanić stated, and is reaching the brink of survival with the latest crisis.
Union representative of Adriadiesel Tihomir Vrbanić and chairman of the workers’ council Vlatko Benković appealed to the Government and especially to HBOR to change its previous ‘stepmotherly attitude’ towards Adriadiesel. This concerns the lack of financial support for issuing guarantees for a very significant job regarding the general overhaul of six large emergency diesel engines from the Slovak nuclear power plant Mochovce, which Adriadiesel won in an international tender at the beginning of the year. While waiting for a response from HBOR, Adriadiesel signed a contract for this job with the Slovak ČKD worth 2.2 million euros at the beginning of March, for which payment is secured by letters of credit from the Czech-Slovak bank, and financing of working capital is secured by a loan from Karlovac Bank, after which the engines arrived in Karlovac and the repairs began.
At the same time as the union protest, an extraordinary meeting of the shareholders’ assembly was held at Adriadiesel, with the main point being the decision to convert 4.4 million kuna of claims from Danko Končar into an ownership stake, thereby increasing his company Jadranska ulaganja’s ownership share from 22 to 29 percent.
The overhaul work on the mentioned engines is extremely significant for the survival of Adriadiesel, considering that it involves a job with a large share of knowledge and newly created value, especially since the global crisis caused Adriadiesel to experience a drop and cancellation of 45 percent of orders for marine engines in 2009 compared to 2008. – The special value of this job, which the workers of Adriadiesel successfully perform, is that it represents a significant departure from shipbuilding and at the same time an entry into the nuclear program and jobs in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and especially Russia. We wonder how we will resolve the guarantee issues for promising jobs with such engines in Russia, worth several tens of millions of euros, if HBOR cannot or does not want to issue guarantees for a job worth 2.2 million euros. Will HBOR director Anton Kovačev then come before the cameras of our television and say ‘It’s a pity, they could have turned to HBOR and we would have resolved it,’ said Tihomir Vrbanić, adding that he sees his last hope in the possible involvement of Minister of Economy Đuro Popijač in resolving this, as he said, ‘completely unnecessary problem created by HBOR with its behavior as if it were some foreign commercial bank.’ (Written and recorded by: Mladen Volarić)
