we in europe - esco

Editorial: esco in a state of change
Dear Members of Staff,
“Nothing is as constant as change”, is
something Heraclitus already discovered
in the 5th century BC. This is also a
perfect quote for our business and our
enterprise.
2011 was an extremely successful year
for esco. Thanks to your great achievement
and also thanks to the long lasting
winter at the beginning of the year,
we have generated the second-highest
result to date since the record year 2010.
However, 2011 ended with very mild
weather, so that we started 2012 with
full warehouses and only modest deicing
salt sales. Therefore, and although
we have successfully expanded our speciality
business over the past years and
are happy about increasing sales figures,
the writing is already on the wall
that esco will not achieve another
record sales year in 2012. Our road salt
business is and will stay subject to enormous
fluctuations of nature and once
again puts high demands on our flexibility
this year.
Nonetheless, we have good reason to
celebrate: For one decade, esco, founded
on 1 January 2002 as Joint Venture of,
at the time, Kali & Salz and the company
Solvay, has been handling the
European salt market successfully. We
will look back on special milestones in
our success story in a special edition of
“we in europe”. However, we would like
to express our heartfelt thanks and
appreciation here and now to all of you
who have contributed to this success
story and who have an active share in
its continuation! In particular our good
collaboration across all plant and country
borders has helped us to deal with
the numerous challenges and advance
the esco Group successfully.
Another reason for celebrating is the
addition we were able to welcome to
our group of companies at the beginning
of January: Solné Mly´ny, the salt
processing operations in Olomouc, in
the east of the Czech Republic, and a
long-term esco customer in the past, is
now a member of the esco Group since
the successful closing on 3 January 2012.
We cordially welcome the approximately
65 members of staff in Olomouc to
our team and will issue “we in europe”
also in Czech from now on.
Finally, there is also a change at esco’s
top in 2012: after more than 35 years of
successful activities in the K + S Group,
Reinhard Dust is switching over to the
passive stage of semi-retirement on
1 April, and will hand over the office of
Managing Director responsible for
Production and Engineering, as well as
Finance and Administration to Matthias
Mohr (in the photo on the left), who will
return from SPL in Chile for this position.
Therefore, 2012 will also be for esco,
besides the sometimes very erratic dayto-day
business, a year of retrospection
we in europe 1|2012
just as much as trendsetting changes –
and we can only affirm Heraclitus:
Nothing is as constant as change!
In this spirit we wish all of us cheerful
work(ing) and success for our numerous
enterprises and projects so that we may
continue to report about the development
of the esco Group in future. A
cheery “Glückauf!”
Reinhard Dust Matthias Mohr Erich Krug