Fortenova sold Eko Biograd to Belgrade’s Tamiva, workers dissatisfied

Eko Biograd plus, a vegetable producer, recently sold by the Fortenova group to the Belgrade company Tamiva. The price remains confidential, but according to Fortenova group, ‘the company’s business model has not been sustainable for years, accumulating over four million euros in losses in the last five years. For this reason, production was not continued after the last harvest.’ This culminated as, according to the PPDiV Union, workers were dismissed without any procedure, and until the end of March, no one officially knew that Eko Biograd had been sold to Tamiva.

The PPDiV union reported to journalists that the management of Eko Biograd plus ignored all calls for discussions regarding the fate of the workers in the company. According to PPDiV, a proposal for negotiations on a collective agreement was sent to the management of Eko Biograd plus on December 5, 2024. As there was no response from the management, PPDiV initiated a mediation process before the Economic-Social Council on March 6, 2025. No one responded to that call either, although, according to PPDiV, the Ministry of Labor, Pension System, Family and Social Policy sent several calls. As told by PPDiV, at the beginning of March, the management of Eko Biograd (then still Fortenova’s people – president Danko Šinka and member Ivan Begović) verbally informed the workers that they no longer needed to come to work, but nothing was handed to them in writing. In our additional inquiry to Fortenova (to which no response was received a week earlier), we sought a comment on this claim from PPDiV, but although they responded to some questions, they did not address this one.

PPDiV is right

Only in mid-March did PPDiV learn that Eko Biograd plus had been sold, but they could not find out to whom. Salaries for February were paid only on March 21, and Fortenova’s silence lasted until March 25 when a letter was sent to the Union, and the next day it was published in the Court Register that the new owner of Eko Biograd plus is the Belgrade company Tamiva and that the new director is Miodrag Lazarević.

In the letter to the Union, Fortenova’s management states that the workers were ‘informed that there is no need to come to work as there is no production. The new owner will provide information on everything else.’ Thus, the CEO of Fortenova group Fabris Peruško and executive director Damir Spudić in the letter to the Union state that the workers were ‘informed,’ although they do not specify whether this was done verbally or in writing, or whether the procedure was followed. We reiterate, nothing was answered to us on this matter, so only PPDiV’s claim remains that the workers were verbally told not to come to work.

That PPDiV was right is confirmed not only by the silence on our first inquiry to Fortenova, or the incomplete response to the additional one, but also by the letter from Eko Biograd’s attorney Domagoja Petrinovića from the law firm Kožul and Petrinović, who was authorized by Lazarević on March 20 this year. In a letter to the Workers’ Council dated April 7 this year, Petrinović only then announces layoffs to the workers (which means they were verbally told not to come to work) and calls for consultation with the Council.

We sent Fortenova the aforementioned additional inquiry in which we stated that the right of the former owner of Eko Biograd plus to not disclose information about the sale process due to business interests cannot be disputed. Despite this, we asked whether they do not think that everything happened in a non-transparent manner considering that the workers did not know what was happening, nor did the union, which is a social partner, and it is in their interest as it concerns their existence. However, although Fortenova responded to our second inquiry, they did not address this question either.

Consultation with the Workers’ Council

In the letter to the Union, Fortenova’s leaders write that they are shocked by the unlawful intrusion into the property of Fortenova group on March 21, the arbitrary opening of the water pump, and its blocking. ‘We are even more shocked by the fact that the leaders of PPDiV actively participated in these actions. We hereby inform you that Fortenova group will take all actions to protect its property and seek satisfaction in court against those who participated in this, organized it, or incited it,’ states the letter from Fortenova’s leaders to PPDiV.

We remind you that at the beginning of March, workers were told not to come to work, and Fortenova ignored repeated calls from PPDiV and the Ministry for social dialogue, so the workers were unclear about their fate, which triggered a union reaction. In PPDiV, they add that at that time, the police were also sent to intervene against the workers.

Furthermore, the controversial notice to the workers not to come to work was not consulted with the Workers’ Council, although the vice president of PPDiV and regional commissioner of Region IV of that union Ivica Blažević tells us that Fortenova claims that a procedure was conducted before the Council. However, this is not confirmed by the aforementioned letter from attorney Petrinović dated April 7, in which he only then calls the Workers’ Council for consultation.

Let us return once more to the letter from Fortenova’s group leaders to PPDiV. In it, as we noted, it states: ‘The new owner will provide information on everything else.’ Although the Union heard information about the sale of the company in mid-March, it was only in the words of Peruško and Spudić that the new owner would provide information to the Union and the workers that it was practically only in that letter dated March 25 that it was officially confirmed that Eko Biograd plus was sold.

We also sent an inquiry to the new owner of Eko Biograd plus, namely Lazarević as the new director of the company, but also to his attorney Petrinović. We asked them why the workers were verbally told that they no longer needed to come to work. Namely, although Lazarević had not yet officially become the director of Eko Biograd plus at the beginning of March (we remind you, the management consisted of Fortenova’s people), we considered this question legitimate as it is clear that Lazarević and Petrinović knew they were taking over the Biograd company and that Fortenova’s management members of that company very likely did not take any action without consulting the new owner. We also asked them why the management ignored PPDiV’s calls for negotiations on the collective agreement and for mediation, and whether a Workers’ Council was held and if there is a record of that meeting. We also asked why everything was so hidden from the workers and the Union (considering the right not to speak about it while negotiations for the takeover are ongoing), but neither Fortenova, nor Lazarević, nor Petrinović responded to those questions.

Rights from the Collective Agreement

However, Blažević forwarded to us a letter from attorney Petrinović to the union representative in Eko Biograd plus Damir Rajšić dated April 2 this year. In it, Petrinović emphasizes that the employer Lazarević intends ‘to offer all workers of the company mutual termination of employment contracts, considering the intended abandonment of the cultivation of previously unprofitable vegetable crops and orientation towards the cultivation of market-competitive and more profitable agricultural crops, which do not require permanent employment of workers, but rather occasional seasonal employment.’ In the continuation of the letter, Petrinović writes that ‘the employer primarily intends to terminate employment relationships mutually, and if this is not possible, will terminate employment contracts in accordance with the Labor Law and other applicable regulations. The employer does not intend to employ workers permanently, nor to increase the number of workers. Namely, the employer’s goal is to avoid creating further losses in the future, which have been continuous in the previous period.’

Only on April 7 did Petrinović, in the aforementioned letter, inform the president of the Workers’ Council Nikola Jukić about the reasons for the cessation of the need for workers and proposes a procedure for conducting consultations, which confirms that it is not true that this procedure was conducted in March. In that letter, Petrinović specifically names the workers who will be laid off (32 of them), and severance pay will be paid in accordance with the Labor Law.

Blažević, on the other hand, says that the workers do not agree to the mutual termination of contracts as they would lose their right to severance pay regulated by the Collective Agreement. He does not dispute the right of the new owner and director to determine whether they need workers or not, but they will not agree to anything less than what they should receive in terms of severance pay. In doing so, the workers of Eko Biograd plus must be paid all salaries up to possible termination.

It seems that both the old owner (Fortenova group) and the new owner (Tamiva) made a mistake by not transparently informing the workers and the Union about the changes after the concluded negotiations on the takeover, which ultimately triggered a reaction from the workers. We will have to see how this story ends. We hope that the discussions will be more transparent than they have been so far.

And finally, one more detail from the takeover of Eko Biograd plus that we came across indirectly. Namely, in the letter from the management of Fortenova group to PPDiV, it states, as we noted, that the management is shocked by the occupation of properties owned by Fortenova by the workers and the Union. This probably means that Fortenova group sold the Eko Biograd brand while retaining ownership of the company’s real estate.