Kidričevo - Boxmark Leather, the Kidričevo-based car upholstery maker which more than halved its workforce during the Covid epidemic, saw its sales drop accordingly last year, as it generated EUR 52 million in revenue, almost 43% less than in 2020. The company nevertheless operated with a profit in 2021 after posting losses for several years.

As the annual report shows, the cost-cutting measures resulted in a net profit of EUR 1.5 million in 2021, which compares to a loss exceeding EUR 2.7 million in 2020. The company also operated in the negative territory for a few years before that.

Boxmark Leather director Marjan Trobiš said in the report that the epidemic-related issues in the global automotive industry had been followed by the lack of chips, and that a similar trend had continued this year.

"The supply chain is expected to stabilise in the second half of 2022, and a true recovery of the sector is expected only at the beginning of 2023," he said, noting that Boxmark Leather had managed to increase its presence in the aviation, railway, furniture and shipping sectors.

The workforce was reduced from 1,450 at the beginning of 2020 to 570 at end-2021, but Trobiš noted that the company was employing qualified staff, putting an emphasis on its development centre in Slovenia and setting up a new framework for future operation.

"The development department ... has brought an increased demand from new customers from the automotive and aviation industries," said the director of the company that exports more than 99% of its production to European and other markets.

The company has been affected somewhat with the postponement of the serial production of the seventh generation of Volkswagen Transporter, parts of which are produced in Kidričevo, from the autumn of 2021 to this spring.

During the crisis, Boxmark Leather's past investments in expanding outside the automotive sector paid off, Trobiš said, noting that growth had been recorded in the aviation sector, and in individual customers such as hotels, yachts and similar.