Borovo naselje is a suburb of Vukovar, located on the right bank of the river Danube, in the eastern part of the Croatian region of Slavonia at 45.3789 lattitude and 18.9554 longitude from Greenwich, 4 km northwest of Vukovar town centre, 15 kilometres northeast of Vinkovci and 32 kilometres southeast of Osijek on the State road D2, Osijek - Vukovar -Ilok. Elevation is 90 metres and climate is continental with hot summers and cold winters. Economy is based on rubber and footwear industries. According to Census of 1961. Borovo naselje had 3,489 and 1991. about 7,000 inhabitants. Although a majority of Borovans feels Borovo naselje is a little town, it is nevertheless a suburb of Vukovar...
In the thirties of the 20th Century, northwest of Vukovar, on the right bank of the river Danube, industrial settlement of Borovo was established. Accurately, on 07. June, 1931. Czech industrialist Tomáš Bat’a (03.04.1876. Zlín, Moravia - 12.07.1932. Bat'ov, Moravia) established ‘Bata Borovo’  factory, modelled on his ‘Bata’ factories in Czhecia, and started first industrial production of shoes in Croatia (which at that time was a part of Kingdom of Yugoslavia), and for its workers he built a settlement Borovo-Bata named after the nearby village, Borovo. Plan of the settlement and projects of the buildings were a work of a well-known Czech architects František L. Gahura, Vladimir Krafik and Antonin Vitek and in the year 1936. Borovo-Bata settlement had 122 buildings, made of red mortarless bricks, in which there were 421 units with 1818 dwellers. Same year a big Social home was built (later called Workers home) with ground floor restaurant, first floor workers restaurant, night bar, department store, library, cinema and a shoe store.

‘Ne bojte se ni kiše ni blata, ako nosite kaljače Bata.’

Around the factory, over the years, a settlement Borovo developed. At first there were a characteristic two-storey buildings (located in so-called colonies I, II, III, IV…) and in later years a much bigger and diverse residential and accompanying buildings, schools, student dormitories, cinema, hotel, football stadium, sport airfield (the so-called ‘Rio’), tennis fields, olympic swimming pool and indoor sportsdome with the capacity of 3,000.
On his way to open a new branch-office in Switzerland Tomáš Bat’a died in an aircrash, together with his pilot, 12.07.1932. at 56 years of age. Airplane Junkers D1608 with Tomáš Bat’a and his pilot Jindřich Brouček (30.06.1893 - 12.07.1932.) crushed at take off, under thick fog, into chimney of one of the buildings of the town of Bat'ov (today’s Bahňák, part of Otrokovice). After the death of Tomáš Bat’a, his son Tomáš Jan Bat’a (17.09.1914. Zlin, Moravia - 01.09.2008. Toronto, Canada), half-brother Jan Antonín Bat’a (07.03.1898. Uherské Hraditì, Moravia - 23.08.1965. Sao Paolo, Brasíl) and family Bat’a took over the firm ‘Bata’ and continued development of ‘Bata Borovo’ in the tradition of good organization, work and technological discipline of ‘Bata’, which in 1939. had 6,290 workers, up to 1945. when the factory was taken from Bat’a family (‘nationalised’) by new communist authorities.

Bata motto:
‘Dobre ale levne boty dostupne i tem nejchudsim - a vysoke mzdy tem, kdo se o to zaslouzi.’
‘Dobre i jeftine cipele, dostupne i za najsiromašnije - a visoke plaće onima koji to zasluže.’
‘Good and cheap shoes, affordable even to the poorest – and high salaries to ones who deserved.’

From the small operation of ‘Bata Borovo’ established in in the year of 1931. a footwear and rubber complex ‘Borovo’ grew, a business system with 15 enterprises employing 22,500 workers, of which over 1,000 were highly educated with a number of master’s and doctor’s degrees among them who, in their own Institute, were the centre of development of new products and technologies. The ‘Borovo’ complex included activities from twenty different economic branches. In the year of 1990. ‘Borovo’ produced 22 million pairs of shoes and had 620 shops in its possession at the territory of Yugoslavia. The factory was not in production from the year of 1991. to the year of 1997. because of Croatian Homeland war, when the town of Vukovar was under siege for three months and suffered great devastation and loss of life, with factory alone sustaining a damage of 300 million Euros.
After a seven year pause, in 1997., production in ‘Borovo’ factory is continued albeit with diminished capacity.