Establishment of the refinery Apollo

When in 1895 the Municipal Council of Bratislava gave its consent to the erection of a mineral oil refinery, Europe was on the threshold of the era of automobilism and large plants for oil refining were scarce. The decision to establish a refinery adopted in Budapest was a far-sighted business move that ranked Bratislava with important oil refining centres in Central Europe.

The new refinery in Mlynská záhrada at the Danube was named Apollo after the Greek mythology. The plant with an area of 7.5 ha refined at first Russian oil from the Caucasus and Galician oil from Poland, later on oil from Romania, as well as from domestic Gbely oil fields. The annual refining capacity of staggered distillation boilers amounted to about 30 thousand tonnes.

At that time, Apollo owned modern advanced technology and produced predominantly aviation gasoline, ligroine (lacquer petroleum), petrols, ceresine, candles but also artificial ice (from paraffin plant coolers) and various lubricants. During its boom days in the inter-war period, the refinery owned oil fields and a network of filling stations.

Less than a year before the end of the Second World War, the refinery was damaged by a wave of air raids and its production was restored no sooner than in May 1945. But it never reached its pre-war level and in 1963 its activities were finally terminated.