A meeting of creditors at a court in the town of Pazin decided that the holding company of the Pula-based shipbuilder Uljanik should be liquidated as it had no means to resume operation.

Official receiver Marija Ruzic said that Uljanik d.d. was not generating any revenues and that its liabilities of 4.85 billion kuna (€652 million) considerably exceeded its assets, totalling 1.75 billion kuna (€235 million).

She recommended that the creditors should vote that there were no grounds for preparing a bankruptcy plan, that the company should cease all operation, and that they decide on the method and terms of liquidating its assets, except those “necessary for the revitalisation and survival of the shipbuilding industry in Pula.”

All three suggestions were passed by a majority of over 90 percent of creditors’ votes, which effectively put an end to the existence of Uljanik d.d.

The company was considered one of the most storied shipbuilding companies in the country, originally founded in December 1856 when the port city of Pula was a major naval base for the navy of Austria-Hungary, with Empress Elisabeth attending the laying of its foundation.

It went on to build more than 50 ships for the Austria-Hungarian navy before the dissolution of the monarchy at the end of World War I in 1918. As Pula was controlled by Italy for the next three decades, the shipyard continued doing repairs of older ships. In the 1950s the company developed technology to build large cargo ships and oil tankers, and continued making specialised freighters into the 2010s.

In 2016 the dock, which was by then privatised and reorganised as a holding firm with several daughter companies, crippled by chronic debt, asked for the government to step in and help save the company with a €96 million loan. After workers’ strikes, order cancellations, arrests of managing board members on suspicion of fraud, and several attempts to find a new investor to save the business, bankruptcy proceedings were eventually launched in May 2019.