Danko Končar: There is no chance that Brodotrogir will be shut down

The owner of Brodotrogir, Danko Končar, denied on Friday at a thematic session of the Trogir City Council the possibility of shutting down Brodotrogir and stated that solutions will be sought through joint activities with unions and workers to overcome difficulties in the Trogir shipyard.

“There is no chance that Brodotrogir will be shut down because the area where it is located is designated as an industrial zone intended for production, and to change the activity, the spatial plan must be changed, which takes ten years,” said Končar, also stating that he has invested 1.4 billion kuna in Brodotrogir, as stipulated in the privatization contract of the shipyard signed five years ago.

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The thematic session of the Trogir City Council dedicated to the situation in Brodotrogir was attended by Končar, whose company Kermas Energija became the majority owner of the Trogir shipyard five years ago, as well as representatives of unions and workers who warned that the situation in the shipyard is difficult and that the possibility of layoffs for more than 300 workers is being announced.

“We have problems in Brodotrogir that we will have to solve together with the workers. We agreed to sit down together and go through each problem individually,” Končar told reporters after the session.

At the City Council session, he also stated that there are “lazy workers” among the workers of Brodotrogir, which diminishes their and the market capability of the Trogir shipyard.

Union and worker representatives of Brodotrogir emphasized that Končar, having become the owner of Brodotrogir five years ago, saved the shipyard from bankruptcy, but criticized both him and the company’s management for not restructuring Brodotrogir according to plan in the past five years. Layoffs will follow, which could jeopardize the survival of Brodotrogir and lead to its shutdown, they warned.

“Workers are in panic due to the uncertainty of their existence and salaries. The management of Brodotrogir has announced to us that 350 workers will soon be laid off, but after the layoff of so many workers, we doubt the survival of the system,” said Đani Lučin, the commissioner of the Independent Union in Brodotrogir.

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At the same time as the thematic session of the Trogir City Council dedicated to the situation in Brodotrogir, union activists from the shipyard organized a petition collection “For the salvation of Brodotrogir” in front of the building where the session was held and in several other places in Trogir.

“With this petition, which has already been signed by about a thousand citizens, we want to draw attention to the difficult situation in Brodotrogir because our salaries have been reduced, and layoffs of more than 300 workers are also threatened,” said Ljiljana Geić from the Brodotrogir branch of the Croatian Metalworkers’ Union.

She added that the petition signing will continue tomorrow.

Danko Končar responded to a journalist’s question about whether there will be layoffs of more than 300 workers in Brodotrogir by saying that in the last month, 14 workers have left the shipyard with severance pay, but according to him, this cannot be called a layoff.

Regarding the layoffs of more than 300 workers, he said, “We need to sit down and agree to come to a solution that will be the most efficient for the shipyard.”

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In response to numerous journalistic questions, Končar at one point said that he “is not the owner of Brodotrogir,” to which a journalist remarked that it is his company Kermes Energija d.o.o.

“I, as Danko Končar, am not the owner of Kermes Energija, or I am no longer – maybe I was at some point,” Končar replied.

In the discussion at the thematic session of the Trogir City Council, he also said that he is willing to “cede ownership” of Brodotrogir if someone is interested in it.

“I offer ownership of Brodotrogir to anyone who is interested in tackling the situation in the company because that ownership means nothing,” he said.

When asked by a journalist to clarify those words and whether it is an announcement of his withdrawal from Brodotrogir, Končar said that he is not “tied to Brodotrogir by an umbilical cord.” “I offered ownership for the simple reason that I am not tied by an umbilical cord, I was not born to be the owner of Brodotrogir,” he said.

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In April 2013, the then Minister of Economy Ivan Vrdoljak and the director of Kermes Energija d.o.o. Danko Končar signed a contract in Trogir for the transfer of shares of Brodotrogir d.d., under which that company became the owner of the Trogir shipyard.

As emphasized today by the assistant to the Minister of Economy, Zvonimir Novak, Brodotrogir has fulfilled all its obligations from the privatization contract in the past five years since it was privatized.

“The state paid Brodotrogir 380 million kuna in support by July 1, 2015, in accordance with the guidelines of the European Commission, and after that, the state did not pay a single kuna, and according to the guidelines and rules of the European Commission, the state can no longer provide subsidies for the next ten years,” said Novak.

He also reminded that the concession for Brodotrogir was issued for shipbuilding activities and a marina, and that this activity cannot be changed without changing the spatial plan.

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The mayor of Trogir, Ante Bilić, dismissed the possibility of changing the spatial plan in the area where Brodotrogir is located because the people of Trogir want to retain shipbuilding activities.

“Brodotrogir is the most important economic branch in Trogir that fills one-third of the city budget,” said Bilić.

The president of the Croatian Metalworkers’ Union, Vedran Dragičević, believes in the survival of Croatian shipbuilding. “I hope that the European Commission will introduce subsidies for shipbuilding to defend against the competition of Chinese and Japanese shipbuilding,” said Dragičević.