Slovenia's Alpina to shut down factory in Sarajevo - report

Production in Sarajevo will be shut down in July and relocated to another factory in Bosnia and Herzegovina, along with some production activities from the Slovenian town of Ziri, Finance news daily quoted sources from Czech company K&H, the owner of Alpina, as saying on Thursday.

"With this, we will achieve higher productivity and efficiency and at the same time produce shoes at more competitive prices. Part of production operations will remain in Ziri," the sources told Finance.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alpina also operates a factory in Tesanj, Finance said.

K&H acquired Alpina from Slovenia's ‘bad bank’, the Bank Assets Management Company (DUTB), in September 2022, for 20 million euro ($21.7 million). Back then, Alpina had already been struggling with falling sales and K&H embarked on a plan to stabilise the company but this year's drop in demand caused additional problems, Finance noted.

DUTB became the majority owner of Alpina in 2015. During the period of ownership, the 'bad bank' granted the company slightly less than 24 million euro in loans and enabled 20 million euro in debt-to-equity conversion.

($ = 0.9224 euro)