Kazincbarcika is a town in northern Hungary, in
Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county. It is located in the Borsod industrial
area, 24 km north of Miskolc, in the Sajó valley. It is the third
largest settlement in the county after Miskolc and Ózd. It is the
seat of the Kazincbarcika district.
Its growth into a city is
due to the industrialization that began after the Second World War.
Its predecessors are industrial settlements, Sajókazinc mining
village and Barcika, which has been home to the power plant since
the 1920s. The two settlements merged in 1947 took on their present
names the following year. In 1954 it was given the status of a city
and another village was added to it, Berente. At that time,
Kazincbarcika already had eleven thousand inhabitants, which tripled
in twenty years, thanks to its largest employer, the Borsod Chemical
Plant, which attracts a lot of labor and is still one of the most
important companies in the region under the name BorsodChem Rt.
Kazincbarcika suffered from the years around the change of regime,
as did most of the industrial cities, but managed to recover. In
1999, Berente broke away from the city.
Kazincbarcika, as its name suggests, was created by
the merger of several settlements.
Sajókazinc was first
mentioned in 1240 as Kazincz. At that time it was owned by the Kazai
Kakas family belonging to the Rátót genus. The ancient nest of the
Kazai Kakas family was Kazán, but in addition to Kazán, his estate
also extended to Kazincz, Igrici, Galgócz and Divény.
It was
an agricultural settlement until the 19th century, then from 1850,
when the coal mine was opened, the emphasis was on industry. Barcika
was created from the merger of Lower and Upper Barcika, and although
a mine was opened here at the end of the 19th century, the
industrial character here remained secondary to agriculture
throughout. However, in the early 1920s, a power plant was built to
supply electricity to the whole of South Borsod, so Barcika also
began to attract labor.
During the post-World War II
industrialization, the two settlements became increasingly important
and began to grow even more. They were officially merged in 1947,
for the time being under the name Sajókazinc, and then in 1948 the
formed large village took the name Kazincbarcika. It was granted
city status in 1954, and in the same year the expanding settlement
merged the municipality of Berente. At that time, it had more than
11,000 inhabitants.
In the 1960s, Kazincbarcika continued to
develop, attracting labor to the Borsod Chemical Plant and actively
participating in the development of the city. In the 1970s, the
population reached thirty thousand.
Mining and industry also
went into crisis in the 1980s, and this only intensified during the
years of regime change. Unemployment has also reached significant
levels in Kazincbarcika. From the mid-1990s, it seems, the city
already knew the hardest times and could slowly start to develop
again. Borsod Chemical Plant operates on the site of the Borsod
Chemical Plant. BorsodChem Zrt. Is one of the leading companies in
the region. Its field of activity is the production and processing
of plastic raw materials, the production of isocyanates. The number
of employees in 2014 exceeded 2,500.
In 1999, Berente
separated from the city and became an independent village.