The period of 50's and 60's

In the early 50's, the government considered the erection of a new refinery to replace Apollo. After some delay, the erection in the site called Vlčie hrdlo was commenced, no sooner than in 1956 after long-term agreements on oil supply from the former Soviet Union had been concluded.

The first production unit of the new refinery called SLOVNAFT was put into operation in 1957. It was an atmospheric-vacuum distillation unit designed for processing of Soviet oil, with a capacity of 122 thousand tonnes of processed crude per year. Shortly afterwards, fuel refining, production of lead-containing petrols, preparation of fuels and, in 1959, oil dewaxing, electrostatic desalting and thermal cracking were launched. A year later, bitumen oxidation and manufacture of bituminous drums were put into operation as well as two units of a heating plant. Much bigger new atmospheric-vacuum distillation unit with a capacity of one million tonnes a year started work in 1961.

In connection with the primary oil refining, another production units were erected for further treatment of semi-products so as to obtain high-quality final products. This included selective refining of oils by furfural, propane deasphalting, contact filtration process, oil mixing department. Erection of reforming units was a platform for production of petrol with increased octane number. New hydrotreating.units served for the production of diesel and kerosene. As one of the first refineries in the world, SLOVNAFT introduced the process of catalytic hydrotreating of viscous lubricating oils.

In February 1962, oil started to be delivered to SLOVNAFT from the Soviet Union by the Druzhba oil pipeline.

In the 60´s, SLOVNAFT turned from a refining plant into a refining and petrochemical combine. Under its umbrella, at that time top-class technological units started to be operated based on licences of world leading companies. An important production unit became the ethylene recovery unit producing ethylene, propylene and C4 and C5 fractions. Based on these semi-products, production of low density polyethylene (LDPE) named Bralen was initiated. Synthetic phenol, acetone, ethylbenzene, paraxylene, ethylene oxide and glycol production units were added up.

By the end of 1970, as much as 62 new production units were operated and the SLOVNAFT´s annual production capacity amounted to 6 million tonnes of oil.