As Poslovni Dnevnik/Suzana Varosanec writes, the end of bankruptcy proceedings for the Brac-based Jadrankamen occurred back at the end of January and the official transfer to the ownership of the American MRC Rock & Sand from California, owned by the Croatian emigrant Mile Grbic, was finalised. The move is rapidly turning in the direction of development, with emphasis on achieving the very first goals.
The backbone of the aforementioned move consists of the vision of this US-based entrepreneur to bring Jadrankamen, and as such the famous Brac stone, to the level of a global brand, with his American company which has an established business through clients and numerous contacts obviously helping this Croatian acquisition in terms of perspective and market penetration for Brac stone and other such products. Among the activities with which they immediately started, the renovation of production halls and the installation of solar panels is visible.
This project is a link with the ports in Slit and Ploce for container traffic and is important for strengthening the export business because large placements of Brac stone on the US market are planned. On the expected wave of changes in the chain of steps to a turnaround in business, plans are being made for significant capacity expansion, which will mean possible new employment, while strategically it will be important to increase revenues as soon as possible to service existing liabilities. After recapitalisation with a massive 45 million kuna, Grbic’s company undertook the responsibility to pay 103 million to creditors.
According to insiders, under this new leadership, Jadrankamen will almost immediately strive for significantly higher revenues than those generated by the continuation of production in bankruptcy (about 30 million kuna). It seems that they aren’t going to have a problem with an annual income of around 10 million euros, last realised about 15 years ago, before the problems that caused the company to end up in the deep and unpleasant waters of bankruptcy.
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