SOLIVARY, a salt-producing company in Prešov, is no longer able to pay its debts and the management of the company has therefore proposed that it submit to bankruptcy proceedings.
“The reality is that despite the huge efforts of all the people involved and despite a slight year-on-year improvement in production results the company was unable to generate resources to pay off old debts, not to mention making investments in new technologies,” Andrej Varchola, the director of the board of the Solivary company told the SITA newswire.
The company currently employs 155 people, who will take holidays after agreement with employee representatives.
“Apart from the past debts the problem also was the high price of electrical energy, which is a key input in salt production, and after the economic crisis came we were trapped in an insoluble situation,” Varchola said.
Despite the fact that Solivary has a monopoly of salt production in Slovakia, it has been unable to compete with much bigger producers of salt on the open European market.
Salt has been produced from underground sources in the Solivar district of Prešov since the sixteenth century, while the first salt-processing factory was opened there in 1925.
