Iskra (electrical engineering)
Iskra ( Slovenian for spark ) was a large Slovenian company in the electrical industry in the former Yugoslavia . The corporate form was SOUR . The Slovenian successor companies that emerged from privatization after Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia in the 1990s are joint stock companies .
Companies
The company was founded in 1946. The number of employees rose from 800 to more than 35,000 (as of 1987). Iskra was thus one of the largest Yugoslav industrial companies and one of the strongest export companies in the country. In the 1980s around 30% of production was exported to a total of 78 countries. In Germany the company was mainly present with electricity meters, in Austria also with telephones.
The company was officially headquartered in Ljubljana , with the largest Iskra plant in Kranj . Other factory locations were among others in Idrija , Vrhnika , Sežana , Nova Gorica , Semič and Horjul .
A wide variety of electrical devices and systems were manufactured, including electric motors , starters and alternators , electricity meters , electronic components such as capacitors and tubes , power tools , telephone systems , telephones and computers and television sets as well as solar cells on a laboratory scale. In the 1960s, Iskra also produced radios .
Involvement in PCB environmental scandal
The Iskra Group also included the capacitors division with a production facility in Semič ( Bela krajina / Weißkrain region) in southern Slovenia. This company had around 2000 employees at its peak. In 1984 it was discovered that the Krupa river had been contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) by improperly stored waste from the company “Iskra Kondenzatorji” from Semič .
The pollution was discovered accidentally by scientists from the health department in Maribor and later also in Ljubljana, when the source of the Krupa was examined for its use to produce drinking water for the Bela krajina. The fact that this is a karst landscape is particularly problematic. Even today, PCB contamination is high and can be detected in soil samples, fish, in water, in pets, etc. The contamination with PCBs is one of the biggest environmental scandals in what was then Yugoslavia and was one of the main reasons for the formation of the Green Party and the emergence of a civil society in socialist Slovenia.
Company history at the Semič site
The original company was founded as “Tovarna kondenzatorjev Semič” (Capacitor Factory Semič) in 1951 by the Ljubljana “Institut za elektroveze”. The production initially comprised metal paper , foil and power capacitors to meet domestic demand. About 40,000 capacitors were manufactured in the first year. The factory in Semič was connected to the telecommunications sector following a reorientation of the institute. The institute itself was later renamed “IEV Industrija za elektroveze”. The ISKRA Kranj company was established in 1961 and the Semič plant was connected to it. In 1989 it was renamed “ISKRA Industrija Kondenzatorjev in opreme Semič” . The number of employees moved between 1992 and 1996 between 1441 and 1340 employees. In 1996 it was converted into a joint stock company. At the beginning of 2001 this company got a new majority owner (with 59.46% share), namely AEG capacitors and converter GmbH . At that time around 1105 people worked in the company.
The company was bought in 2010 by Iskra MIS , which was founded in 2005. Iskra MIS is now part of Iskra sistemi dd , Ljubljana. Iskra MIS owns the subsidiary “Iskra Turizem” , which operates, among other things, the Gače ski center in Bela krajina and the Primostek campsite.
design
Before that, Savnik was the head of Iskra's industrial design office in Kranj. His Iskra ETA telephone, designed in 1979, won numerous design awards in the 1980s (including the iF Design Award (Hanover) ). Two US and one South Korean companies that manufactured a plagiarism of this phone were "awarded" the Plagiarius in 1985 and 1986, respectively.
Other Iskra products designed by well-known designers were the electric drills by Albert Kastelec (late 1960s) and the Iskra Digimer I multimeter by Marijan Gnamuš (1971).
privatization
After Slovenia's independence , the company was privatized in the 1990s and split up into several joint-stock companies (including Iskra dd , Iskraemeco , Iskra Avtoelectrika and Iskratel ).
literature
- Andreja Jaklič, Marjan Svetličič, Enhanced transition through outward internationalization: outward FDI by Slovenian firms , 2003, ISBN 0-7546-3134-6 , p. 215ff
- Enciklopedija Jugoslavije , 2nd edition, volume 5
- Enciklopedija Slovenije
Individual evidence
- ↑ S. Polič, H. Leskovšek, M. Horvat: PCB Pollution of the Karstic Environment (Krupa River, Slovenia) (PDF; 114 kB), Acta Carsologica 29/1, 10, Ljubljana 2000, pp. 141–152.
- ↑ Borut Mehle: "Razpad Zelenih jemljem kot osebni poraz" (German: The disintegration of the Greens [party] is a personal defeat for me), daily newspaper Dnevnik (Ljubljana) , June 13, 2009: [1]
- ↑ Damir Kundić: Somovi iz Kupe godinama zatrovani smrtonosnim spojem (German: Catfish from the Kolpa are poisoned with deadly substances for years) , Novi list Rijeka, November 11, 2012, accessed on February 19, 2013.
- ↑ European Commission, "Dioxins & PCBs: Environmental Levels and Human Exposure in Candidate Countries", Brussels, 1994: Final report of the European Commission from 1994 (PDF; 4.1 MB)
- ↑ Mateja Kambič: "Izdelava in ocena investicijskega programaza podjetje ISKRA konzenzatorji dd" (Development and evaluation of an investment program for the company ISKRA kondenzatorji dd) , diploma thesis, University of Ljubljana, Ekonomska fakulteta, September 2002
- ↑ Frnaci Koncilija "Semiške Iskre ni več (German: Iskra Semič no longer exists) ( Memento of the original from May 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link accordingly Instructions and then remove this note. , Časnik dated August 7, 2010.
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated December 13, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ The abbreviation dd stands for delniška družba (Slovenian for stock company ).
