Karlovački Wienerberger Ilovac ceases production

The largest regional brick manufacturer, Karlovački Wienerberger Ilovac, will begin shutting down its kilns and a multi-month production halt on September 13. According to board member Velimir Gojnić, production will first be completely stopped in Plant 2, and by the end of the month, production in Plant 3 will also cease.

Let us recall that the Wienerberger group, since acquiring the Karlovac brick factory Ilovac in the mid-90s, has invested over 500 million kuna in modernization, the construction of greenfield plants, and robotization, to which significant investments in the Cetera plant in Đakovo and the latest acquisition, the brick factory in Petrinja, should be added. – The reason for this difficult decision is the market decline and the recession that has lasted longer in Croatia than in neighboring countries. In total production, our export share is about 30 percent, which mainly relates to the markets of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Slovenia. According to the current plan and the projected budget for next year, the plan is to resume production in March 2011. Counting the production halt at the beginning of this year, Wienerberger Ilovac had a production season of only five months, said Gojnić.  However, during the downtime of the kilns and production, WI will not be completely deserted, as an educational cycle will be conducted in accordance with the internal SAP Wienerberger Group program, which relates to the implementation of optimization programs in the procurement sector of spare parts, special materials, and repairs.

This segment is particularly important, emphasizes Gojnić, for monitoring actual production costs, which include the procurement of parts and production downtime due to failures. Namely, each day of downtime in production at Wienerberger Ilovac results in a loss of 40 to 50 thousand euros. Given that the company robotized its plants six years ago, training of specialized personnel in this important segment, although partially already completed, must also receive further upgrades.   Before this production halt, Wienerberger Ilovac reduced the number of employees by 14, half of whom retired and half were laid off, so it will finish this year with 96 employees. After acquiring the Karlovac brick factory, Wienerberger employed about 350 people, and since then its production has tripled, while the number of employees has been reduced to one-third, which has enormously increased productivity, but that is still not enough in the fight against the current recession.   (Mladen Volarić)