History

The Uničov Engineering Works National Enterprise was established in 1949. By the decision of the Party and the Government, the production program was imposed, focused on ground and mining machinery. The key task for the next forty years was the development and production of ground and mining machinery, mainly for the needs of the North Bohemian coal mines. Since 1970, UNEX has designed and produced more than a hundred unique giant bucket wheel excavators , and most of them still work reliably. Within almost forty years, these bucket wheel excavators in the characteristic yellow colours of UNEX have mined more than 4.7 billion cubic metres of overburden and 3.2 billion cubic metres of coal. UNEX has also designed and produced dozens of stockyard machines, hundreds of kilometres of belt conveyors and thousands of shovel excavators.

It was transformed to a private company under the new name of UNEX a.s. in the 1993 voucher privatisation. Bancroft Eastern Europe Fund, its new majority shareholder since 1998, concluded a contract to sell the entire equity share to the company managers in 2003. The majority share package, held by the managers, was sold in 2005. Subsequently, an extraordinary general meeting of UNEX a.s. decided on the transfer of the property right of the minority shareholder's shares to a single shareholder: ARCADA Capital, a.s.

In the same year, an acquisition was made of 100% of shares of Moravské železárny a.s. in Olomouc – die forge and foundry complementary with the production in Uničov. Due to the lack of capacities for production of cranes, jibs and welded constructions in the parent plant in Uničov, the UNEX group expanded by acquisition of the key assets in the premises of the former company Vihorlat Snina in eastern Slovakia in the year 2007. In 2008, the three-year plan of the Unex group expansion was rounded off by acquisition of the foundry belonging to the former Prakovská oceliarská spoločnosť Co., (POS) in Prakovce. Unex is thus able to offer a complete range of castings both in terms of the sorts of cast iron and the size, and its capacity is more than 50,000 tons of castings per year. Production in the Snina and Prakovce plants is performed by the 100% subsidiary company UNEX Slovakia, a.s