The history of “Floarea Soarelui” S.A. with focus on advanced technologies

The history of “Floarea Soarelui” S.A. with focus on advanced technologies

06.02.2023

By the beginning of 1939, 119 workers were employed at the vegetable oil plant of the Volman brothers. The company had a powerful boiler, a modern steam engine and a diesel engine at that time. According to the Union of Industrialists of Romania, the Volman brothers factory was the largest oil producer in the entire country and successfully competed with another formidable player of the vegetable oils market in Romania - the “Phoenix” JSC from Bucharest.

(The steam engine manufactured by the German company “Wolf”)

The Volman brothers company was widely known far beyond the city of Balti and Bessarabia as a whole. The company had warehouses and representative offices in Bucharest, Brasov, Braila, Cluj, Craiova, Ploiesti and Timisoara. The Volman family owned as well offices in the European countries, such as Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark and Sweden. It was a dynamic enterprise and the owners of the vegetable oil plant showed interest in advanced technologies and actively adopted foreign experience – facts which were described in detail in an article by “The Bessarabian Word”.

In June 1940 the brothers Isaac and Israel Volman found refuge in Romania, leaving all their possessions in Balti and moving with their families to Bucharest. They never returned to Balti and Isaac Wolman died in Bucharest in 1960.

After the WWII, Israel Volman worked for a vegetable oils company in Bucharest. In 1950 he emigrated to Israel, where his professional experience was of great use in the Ministry of Industry and Trade (1956-1962), then in a crude oil export company (1962-1976). Israel Volman died in 1983 at the age of 87.