Its ownership was fully cleared by the Slovenj Gradec District Court on Wednesday after dismissing last month an appeal filed against the sale to the Turks by Kronospan Holdings, a Cyprus-based company.

The Ljubljana-based Yildiz Entegre Adria company is a subsidiary of Turkish group Yildizlar Yatirim Holding.

Lesna TIP, a producer of particle boards from the town of Otiški Vrh, was sold to Yildiz Entegre Adria as the best bidder on 29 November.

In a decision published today, the court said that "as the legal successor to the debtor in receivership, the buyer ... can register its ownership rights".

Last November, the new owner visited Otiški Vrh in the region of Koroška, north, together with the Slovenian agriculture minister to meet locals, announcing the launch of production in 2018.

At the time, the director of Yildiz Entegre Adria, Ediz Hasmet Kokyazici, could not say how many people would get a job.

However, unofficial statements put the figure at around 500 new jobs in three years if production is successfully launched.

Even before bidding to buy the entire bankruptcy estate, the Turks bought Lesna TIP's main equipment - a 200-metre hot press machine - last September, which reportedly cost two million euro.

Lesna TIP had been struggling with liquidity for years, ending 2010 with a loss of 3.9 million euro and getting its first Turkish owner back in 2011, when Miador's subsidiary Dortek acquired a majority stake.

Despite the efforts to get out of the red, Lesna TIP, at the time the only producer of particle boards in Slovenia, entered a debt-restructuring process in 2013 and went into receivership in March 2016.