Chapter 6: Slovenia
(continued)
Of the 70 organizations identified as potential candidates for this survey, only 37 were eventually interviewed, the main reason for this being that information on environmental businesses in Slovenia is not regularly updated and therefore a significant number of companies had already ceased to exist. Furthermore, another survey, also undertaken by the REC, was in progress at the same time. For this reason, many environmental professionals expressed reluctance to spend time on interviews that primarily served foreign companies interested in business opportunities and becoming active on the Slovenian market.
The list of interviewed experts (with correspondence addresses) is provided in Section 6.8.
The organizations were selected on the basis of their primary area of expertise in order to ensure that all areas of environmental technology were evenly represented within the survey. Several organizations were involved in different and multiple areas of environmental technology or R&D, thus resulting in a varying number of responses in different areas during the interviews. In addition, attention was also given to the proper balance of organizations from all major cities and regions of Slovenia, and to the participation of public institutions and private organizations involved in the environmental technology business or in R&D.
Most of the organizations interviewed in this survey were established before 19911, with only seven being established after Slovenia had declared independence. This is partly due to the fact that many of those established after 1991 provide environmental services rather than technology and, as such, did not fit into the profile of organizations desired for interview. In addition, many newly established organizations had already closed or had reoriented their activities.
The types of organizations surveyed are as follows:
The number of environmental businesses included in the survey (eight) might seem relatively small. However, it was intended to include only those organizations that really provided environmental technologies to the marketplace - not just consulting services. In fact, there are very few such organizations in Slovenia. Under the "environmental business" classification, only seven firms were identified. The number of organizations classified as "other" is, however, relatively large. This is because many organizations whose environmental function is only a small part of the activities of the larger organization or is just an additional source of income were also included. A typical example of such an organization is the Institute of Public Health, which is practically the only organization dealing with problems related to noise, vibration, and industrial health and safety.
The size of those organizations surveyed with respect to the number of employees was as follows:
In terms of size, the distribution of organizations between the small, medium-size, and large categories was fairly even - there were 11-12 organizations in each category based on the number of employees: fewer than 10, between 10 and 100, and more than 100 employees, respectively. In the breakdown presented, the 11 largest organizations were divided into two groups to indicate the fraction of companies with over 700 employees. This can be considered particularly large for the Slovene business community. It should be pointed out that, in cases where subdivisions of organizations could be clearly identified as performing environmental activities, only the size of the subdivision was taken into account, and not the whole organization.
Based on the size of income, as declared by the respondents, the organizations were distributed in the following way:
Interestingly, on the basis of annual environmental revenues, most organizations with anywhere from 10 to 700 employees classified themselves as medium-sized. In actual numbers, the breakdown was as follows:
While some small organizations reported revenues of as much as USD 2.5 million, all but one of the medium-sized and large organizations reported an income from environmental activities of less than USD 1 million. This points to a relatively low percentage of revenue generation from environmental business activity within medium-sized and large organizations. It must be noted, however, that not all the organizations were willing to provide information concerning their income.
Organizations from almost all regions of Slovenia were surveyed, including:
Rural or less developed areas are not included in the above table, since there are actually very few environmental business activities there. Any environmental activities in those areas tend to be run by companies from other major cities which were included in the survey. While the major cities and smaller towns are evenly represented, the relatively large number of organizations from the capital city of Ljubljana was due to the fact that all major research institutions and government agencies surveyed were located in the capital.
As shown in Table 6.2, over two-thirds of the activities of the majority of organizations are conducted at a national level. Conversely, the share of international activities was below one third for most organizations. Smaller organizations and organizations from smaller towns were the ones primarily involved in local activities. Most organizations were involved in a mixture of operations - only three organizations operated just at the local level, while only two organizations were found to operate at the international level.
| TABLE 6.2: GEOGRAPHIC SCOPE OF OPERATIONS OF ORGANIZATIONS SURVEYED | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Scope of Operations | Local | National | International |
| Less than one-third of overall activities | 9 | 7 | 19 |
| Between one-third and two-thirds | 4 | 6 | 2 |
| More than two-thirds | 5 | 15 | 2 |
| Note: The breakdown presents the number of organizations indicating a given share of their overall activity at different levels (i.e., local, national, and international scope of operations) | |||
The apparent balance among all areas is, however, distorted by the fact that some large companies are active in several areas. This is particularly the case for "other" activities, under which respondents most frequently included environmental risk assessment and consulting, which can be relevant to all areas and not to any specific environmental technology. Radiation protection related activities were also classified in this category.
