After the building inspectorate found last week that all the buildings erected as part of the renovation in the wake of the May 2017 fire were illegal and should be removed, Kemis stopped bringing waste from its clients to Vrhnika.

Speaking to the STA on Tuesday, Kemis CEO Boštjan Šimenc said that a part of the 45 employees were on pre-planned annual leave, while the other part come to work to prepare the waste accepted before the inspectorate's decision for transport abroad.

Kemis has been given until June 2020 to dismantle the buildings, but Šimenc said that the company would appeal, because if they had to tear down the buildings, Kemis would be gone. "We're going to appeal, but I cannot say yet when or on what grounds," he said.

The company has 15 days to bring an appeal, which will be handled by the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning as well as the Administrative Court. "However, until the enforcement, the investor can legalise the illegal construction or acquire a development and operating permit," the ministry said.

Šimenc warned though that if Kemis was forced to keep its operations suspended for a longer period of time, the company would lose the capacities it has paid up with waste incineration facilities abroad. This also raises the question where waste from Slovenia will end up.

"Kemis has contracts with foreign removal companies and if it doesn't meet these contracts, deliver the waste, someone else will get the capacities. We know there's great pressure on incineration facilities abroad, including from other countries."

Kemis estimates that other Slovenian companies could acquire only about a third of the capacities secured by Kemis abroad at the moment.

After the 2017 fire, Kemis removed part of waste from their clients and transported it directly for elimination abroad, bypassing the Vrhnika site.

However, Šimenc ruled such a possibility out, because the situation was different then when the company applied the solution as a stop-gap measure until the situation normalised.

"We are making losses with direct transports without prior treatment. We don't need employees for that, but drivers. Our mission is not transporting waste from point A to point B, but rather doing something with them and trying to have them eliminated abroad at the most favourable price," said Šimenc.

If over the next few days there is any indication that the situation can be resolved, Šimenc estimates that Kemis could survive for about a month without doing business.

"However, this is a question for the owner, how long they will continue to watch us. It's not good intentions that they have us for, it's to make profit. If there's no profit, it's better to send the company into receivership," he said.

Since 2004, Kemis has been in sole ownership of Kemis Gorenje, a subsidiary of the home appliances group, which was taken over by Chinese Hisense in 2018.