September 11, 2021 - While baklava is not a traditional Croatian type of pastry, a pair of investors from the UK opened the biggest baklava factory in the EU in Croatia.
The company called New Bakery has been making baklava in Croatia for a while now, and they are one of the biggest producers of the Turkish-origin pastry in the world. Yesterday, as Igor Rahmetović reports for the Croatian Radiotelevision, a new site was opened in Donji Stupnik, which is a Zagreb suburb. It is the highest-producing site in the EU, with the most high-tech equipment in the field and numerous certificates of exellence, as well as halal and kosher certificates.
The company has been producing baklava in Croatia for the past 7 years. However, the older production site in Velika Gorica was not able to produce enough baklava to satisfy the ever-growing market of people with sweet tooth, so an additional investment has been made to increase the production. To date, the investors Constantine Azar and Mehmet Yasar Halim, both from London, invested over 5 million Euro into the baklava production in Croatia.
The New Bakery company produces over 500 tonnes of baklava per year, which translates to over 25 million individual baklava. Almost all of the baklava produced by them in Croatia will continue to be exported. Their products can be found in all the biggest supermarket chains in the world. Constantine Azar explained that the reason why they chose Croatia to base their operation is the excellent location, ports and the fact that there are enough workers (who know how to make baklava!) to work in their factory. Currently, there are 60 people working in the baklava factory in Donji Stupnik, but it was announced yesterday that they plan to employ 30 additional workers by the end of next year.
