The Delamaris Story

The fac­to­ry was estab­lished by the Gen­er­al French Com­pa­ny for Canned Foods (Soci­ete Gen­erale Fran­caise). The locals named it “fab­ri­ca dei France­si” or “fab­ri­ca dei bag­ni”. A sec­ond fac­to­ry was built by Warhanek from Vien­na and began oper­at­ing on 22 Decem­ber, 1882. Warhanek also built the first fish can­ning fac­to­ry in the Gulf of Tri­este in Duino near Tri­este in 1867. Gio­van­ni Degras­si built a small­er fac­to­ry in 1882. Troion and some stock­hold­er opened the fourth fac­to­ry, S.I. Prodot­ti Ali­men­ta­ri Tor­ri­giani, in 1904.The fac­to­ries sold more than a half of their total pro­duc­tion to for­eign companies.

The fac­to­ries fried, mar­i­nat­ed and canned eel from the Venet­ian lagoon. They also pro­duced fried and canned “Russ­ian anchovies” in olive oil in 125g cans. The largest cans they offered includ­ed 1000g of anchovies. Salt­ed anchovies from Nor­way were also cleaned, mar­i­nat­ed in vine­gar and spices and packed in small barrels.

The lack of raw mate­ri­als and labour force dur­ing WWI par­a­lyzed all of the indus­tri­al activ­i­ties in the region. Pro­duc­tion ceased com­plete­ly in 1918 and the fac­to­ry was closed until 1920. The region suf­fered pover­ty and famine, and this was then com­pound­ed by drought, the plague and the Span­ish flu. The Adri­at­ic Sea was full of drift­ing mines and net and night fish­ing were strict­ly for­bid­den; ves­sels had to stay in port dur­ing the night. Most of the able-bod­ied, young local men were on the front line and the old­er fish­er­men and the women who had pre­vi­ous­ly worked in the fac­to­ries were unemployed.

The Ital­ian com­pa­ny S.A. Con­ser­va­tri­ci bought all of the Aus­tri­an bank’s prop­er­ty in Izo­la in 1920, then bought the Degras­si fac­to­ry and S.I. Prodot­ti Alimetari Tor­ri­giani. S.A. Con­ser­va­tri­ci was restruc­tured and renamed Ampe­lea Con­ser­va­tri­ci S.A. in 1930. Mean­while, Warhanek’s fac­to­ry was tak­en over by Gior­gio Sanguet­ti and renamed Arrigo­ni in 1926. Ampelea’s rise was rapid; it had strong sup­port in Italy and aimed to please its mar­ket, but it accu­mu­lat­ed for­eign cur­ren­cy at the expense of its down­trod­den labour force. Ampe­lea mod­ern­ized its fac­to­ry with new steam boil­ers, an auto­clave for ster­il­iza­tion under pres­sure at 125°C, new work­ing halls and elec­tric­i­ty, and man­u­fac­ture their prod­ucts using anchovies, pilchards, mack­erels, tuna and leer­fish. They man­u­fac­tured var­i­ous canned prod­ucts, includ­ing fish, fish meal, fish oil, bone­less filets of import­ed fish, mar­malade, veg­eta­bles, and toma­to sauce and con­cen­trate, and salty anchovy fil­lets in glass jars. Because of Amer­i­can and Cana­di­an demand stric­tures, prod­uct qual­i­ty was of utmost impor­tance. The fac­to­ry employed spe­cial tasters to ensure salt­ed fish, fil­let and pâté ripeness and qual­i­ty until 1950, when its last taster hung up his cap. Ampe­lea and Arrigo­ni orga­nized their own fish­ing fleet of 31 ves­sels in 1938, includ­ing Arrigoni’s ves­sels for fish­ing tuna and Ampelea’s two trans­port ships for import­ing frozen fish. After 1943, Sloven­ian ter­ri­to­ry was occu­pied by Ger­man troops who took sov­er­eign­ty from the Ital­ian Repub­lic and incor­po­rat­ed it into the Third Reich.

When the war end­ed, the Region­al Lib­er­a­tion Front took over the fac­to­ries. Work was very lim­it­ed due to polit­i­cal uncer­tain­ty, for­eign own­er­ship and lack of raw mate­ri­als. In 1947, the cen­tral author­i­ties in Bel­grade issued an order to haul all of the mod­ern machin­ery to Croa­t­ia because it was afraid that the peace treaty would­n’t acknowl­edge this ter­ri­to­ry as part of Yugoslavia. In the same year, the fac­to­ry was nation­al­ized and renamed “Ex Ampe­lea”. The peace treaty assigned Izo­la to Zone B. The act of self-man­age­ment made the com­pa­ny social prop­er­ty in 1950 and a year lat­er it was being man­aged by a work­ers col­lec­tive. Dela­maris, the Import-Export com­pa­ny for fresh and canned fish, was estab­lished in 1952. Its final appro­pri­a­tion by Yugoslavia in 1954 marked a major turn­ing point in the dif­fi­cult post-war peri­od. Mod­ern­iza­tion with the pur­chase of a new auto­clave and can­ning machine fol­lowed. In 1956, the fac­to­ry was named Iris and Arrigo­ni Argo. In 1959, the total reor­ga­ni­za­tion of Yugoslavia’s food indus­try result­ed in the merg­ing of Iris, Argo, Dela­maris, and Ikra from Kop­er (for­mer­ly de Langlade) to form the Com­bine of Can Indus­try Dela­maris, which oper­at­ed until 1973. The Iris plant processed fish and Argo processed oth­er food prod­ucts. The fol­low­ing three years, being full of reor­ga­ni­za­tion attempts, were like a roller coast­er ride for the com­pa­ny. The lack of domes­tic fish after 1962 result­ed in prod­uct redi­rec­tion to fruit and veg­etable prod­ucts, soup con­cen­trates and, espe­cial­ly, mixed fish.

In 1973, Slovenia’s fish com­pa­nies joined oth­er sim­i­lar com­pa­nies to form the unit­ed com­pa­ny of the food indus­try under the name HP Ljubl­jana, which merged with Dro­ga Por­torož in 1978, work­ing in this form until 1989.

Slovenia’s inde­pen­dence dimin­ished the size of its com­pa­nies’ nat­ur­al mar­kets and forced them to redi­rect their ener­gy to east­ern and west­ern for­eign mar­kets and face strong com­pe­ti­tion. Con­se­quent­ly, reor­ga­ni­za­tion and increased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty made pos­si­ble by automa­tion and man­pow­er reduc­tion fol­lowed. A busi­ness sys­tem for fish­ery and canned food was formed in Jan­u­ary 1992. The prin­ci­pal hold­er was HOLD­ING DELA­MARIS p.o. Izo­la. The sys­tem includ­ed the fol­low­ing com­pa­nies: Del­sar d.o.o. (can indus­try), Riba d.o.o. (fish­ing), Del­mar d.o.o. (fish trad­ing), Lera d.o.o. (fish farm­ing) and Frigo­mar d.o.o. (frozen fish pack­ing). Pri­va­ti­za­tion was final­ized in 1997 and four new com­pa­nies were formed: Dela­maris d.d., Del­mar d.o.o., Riba d.o.o. and Frigo­mar d.o.o. In August 2008, the pro­duc­tion divi­sion was sep­a­rat­ed from Dela­maris, konz­erv­na indus­tri­ja d.d. (pub­lic lim­it­ed com­pa­ny), and began func­tion­ing inde­pen­dent­ly with­in Dela­maris, konz­erv­na indus­tri­ja d.o.o. (abbre­vi­at­ed name: Dela­maris d.o.o.).

The com­pa­ny moved its pro­duc­tion to a new­ly-built build­ing close to Piv­ka in Kal in 2014. It is focused on sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, uses alu­mini­um pack­ag­ing mate­r­i­al, pro­motes tra­di­tion­al prod­ucts and devel­ops new ones.