The successful business partnership of Przemysław Ryszard Sobczak, Joško Konjevoda, and Jerzy Kawałek, along with the establishment of the waste management company Bio ulja from Šibenik, was preceded by a series of chance events. Sobczak, who has been vacationing in Hvar for years and is in love with Croatia, casually asked the owner of his favorite restaurant one summer evening what he does with used cooking oil. After the restaurant owner replied that he manages in various ways and does not have a quality solution, an interesting business idea sparked in Sobczak’s mind. Since his company in Poland deals with waste disposal (at that time it had 200 employees, today more than 400 and continues to grow), he realized that he could also engage in this in Croatia.
Polish-Croatian Connection
When he returned to Poland, he began looking for someone in Croatia who spoke Polish, and since Konjevoda speaks Polish excellently and was collaborating with many Poles and the Polish embassy in Zagreb at that time, their first meeting took place in 2012. Konjevoda emphasizes that it never crossed his mind that collecting used cooking oil could be a profitable business, and he refused to get directly involved in this business venture.
– I supported him and promised to help as much as I could for his idea to come to life, but without me, especially not in a partnership sense. However, Sobczak pushed the whole story even harder, and we often stayed in contact, which ultimately led to a partnership. We invested our own capital in the form of loans, rented a warehouse in TLM Šibenik, obtained the first permit for waste collection, and started. After two years, TLM did not extend our warehouse lease, so the decision was made to purchase land in the Podi Business Zone near Šibenik and build our own warehouse with the help of a commercial bank loan. This was a turning point, and that’s when the real rise of our company began. Additionally, Sobczak and Kawałek collaborated in Poland before the Bio ulja story was launched, as Kawałek is the owner of a company that deals with mediation, transportation organization, and the buying and selling of waste. When Bio ulja was launched, cooperation with his company began, and as the collaboration improved over time, Kawałek expressed interest in entering the ownership structure of Bio ulja, to which we agreed – describes Konjevoda.
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