Annual Reports

The most difficult period in Slovalco’s history continued in the year under review.

At the beginning of January, after 70 years of production, the production of primary aluminium was completely stopped by shutting down the last of 226 pots. It should be recalled that the root cause of the whole sequence of events that preceded the closure of primary aluminium production in Žiar was the long-standing reluctance of the state executive to adopt the necessary legislative changes. These could have created the same conditions for the Slovak energy-intensive industry as for its counterparts in developed European countries, and on this basis, they could have planned their future. Unfortunately, this did not happen…

After the shutdown of primary aluminium production, we continued to look for reserves and make changes to all processes. This had to be done in order to be efficient and to make the best use of the remelting technology in operation. I very much appreciate the attitude of all Slovalco employees, both the current ones and those who had to leave our ranks involuntarily. I appreciate their highly professional approach and attitude to the performance of their duties, observing all the principles of safety, health, occupational and environmental protection, while carrying out a large number of non-standard operations and activities throughout the year. As a result, despite the challenging conditions, there were no work-related accidents with sick leave or serious risk situations during the period under review.

In addition to the safe shutdown of the technology, we have prepared the facilities so that, if the decision is made to restart production, we will be able to restart primary aluminium production safely and in the shortest possible time. This is why we are striving to keep the facilities in standby mode.

We have optimised and restructured all processes, including support and administrative processes. We have retained key skills, the best people and key employees who are to move forward with the company despite the difficult times. We are able to operate the process scrap remelting technology efficiently, meeting the quality parameters required by our customers and the precise timing of deliveries. We have also found opportunities to utilise anode production capacity.

Milan Veselý

Chief Executive Officer