Ljubljana - The Swiss company Agrokor, which is in liquidation, is soliciting interest in the purchase of the Costella water bottling company, whose most valuable asset is a water extraction concession valid until 2035. The first non-binding bids for the company are expected in the coming days, the newspaper Finance reported on Thursday.

The company Costella, along with its water bottling plant near the town of Kostel in southern Slovenia, was taken over in 2016 by Ardeya Global Ltd. from Dubai.

A few years after the purchase, Ardeya turned out to be owned by the Swiss company Agrokor, property of the former boss of the Croatian conglomerate Agrokor, Ivica Todorić.

The assets of the Swiss company were separated from those of the fallen Zagreb-based giant, but the Swiss insolvency administrator of Agrokor is now selling Costella.

Prior to Todorić and Agrokor, Costella was owned by the forest management company Gozdarstvo Grča from Kočevje. It was at that time, between 2009 and 2011, when the company reached peak turnover of around EUR 4 million.

According to Finance, Costella has never even come close to exploiting the water extraction capacity granted by the currently valid concession: 250 million litres of water per year. In recent years, extraction dropped to just 12 million litres a year.

Finance adds that the concession, which runs until 2035 and can be renewed, is the company's most valuable asset, although additional investment in production would be needed to enable the company to extract that much water.

Current capacities, built in 2006 and 2007, enable the extraction of up to ten million litres of water per year per shift. The water source lies in a primeval forest in the immediate vicinity of the bottling plant.