Made in Croatia

Dragitza is a brilliant young Croatian Peruvian who decided to seek a better life in her homeland. She started her own business, has a stand-up comedy act and is a finalist on a popular TV cooking show. Founder of Puro Amor Design in Zagreb You may not have heard of Dragitza Rastegorac yet, but you have probably heard of the brand Puro Amor Design, which has been selling cups with wacky and personalized labels for a while. This 29-year-old was born and raised in Peru, but her Croatian roots brought her back to the region her family came from. She…

A Vodnjan company called Sentinel Marine Solution has signed a contract with the Hanse Group, which entered into the OEM segment and thus opened the door to mass production for shipbuilders. As Novac/Jozo Vrdoljak/Privredni.hr writes on the 14th of January, 2020, the Vodnjan company Sentinel Marine Solution, with the exception of Vodnjan, has offices in Zagreb and Ljubljana (Slovenia), along with its manufacturing facility. The sixteen employees who work there are focused on development, aided by the 1 million euro venture capital fund of South Central Ventures and the capital of several other partners. ''After five years of development, we've…

January 15, 2020 - More under-reported Croatian excellence on the global stage, as Croatian shipbuilders produce the world's best new luxury cruise ship of 2019, as Scenic Eclipse enjoys the patronage of Helen Mirren.  One thing I have come to learn after many years of living in Croatia is that things are rarely as they seem on the surface, and that few scratch beneath that surface to see what lies below. The perceived picture of the Croatian economy is one of doom and gloom - lots of unemployment, lack of skilled workers, few opportunities, lack of competitiveness.  And while all…

Everyone knows that fish and seafood in general makes up a huge part of the Croatian, particularly Dalmatian and Istrian diets. Fresh fish caught from the sparkling Adriatic sea paired with a domestic wine from grapes grown and harvested from local vineyards is nothing abnormal, but it seems that Croatian fish is becoming a big hit abroad as well as at home. As Novac writes on the 6th of January, 2020, it would seem that Croatian fish is an increasingly popular delicacy abroad, far beyond not only Croatian and EU borders, as has been evidenced by impressive export figures. More…

In the first nine months of 2019, Croatia exported 683 million EUR of sparkling wine. The production and export of Croatian sparkling wine is on the rise and exports within first nine months of this year have also exceeded that of 2018. First Nine Months of 2019 Exports Exceed 2018 From January to September of 2019, Croatia exported 476 hectoliters of sparkling wine compared to a total of 441 hectoliters last year, the Croatian Chamber of Commerce (CCE) announced, according to Novac/Jutarnji List on Friday, December 27, 2019. "The production of local sparkling wines is constantly growing, as is its…

As Novac writes on the 29th of December, 2019, everything went much more spontaneously than it did in a planned fashion when it comes to these Sesvete chocolates that have won over Japanese customers, acting as yet another example of just how successful the ''Made in Croatia'' tag could really be for this little country. ''My father had had a plan in his mind for ages to produce some authentic Croatian desserts, chocolate balls. Four years ago, when the possibility to obtain EU funds was opened, we decided to take a chance,'' recalls Fran Reizl, the son of the owner…

December 22, 2019 - Another day, another piece of Rimac magic. Check out the latest from the RImac C_Two prototype in this stunning video.  Last week I wrote an article listing my top 30 discoveries and best experiences of 2019 in Croatia. It was quite a list and it has been quite a year. The article was popular and widely shared, and I have had several requests to make it an annual list, a nice way to finish the year with a wave of positivity. A nice idea, and I will.  But having lived here for 17 years and travelled…

Croatian scientists from the St. Catherine Specialty Hospital published an extremely important scientific paper in the Genes scientific journal, showing that the injection of the stromal and the mesenchymal stem cells into the knee joint shows long-term effects when measured 24 months after application. The paper, which you can read here (full text of the paper is available if the reading of highly technical and scientific papers is your thing) is called "A 24-Month Follow-up Study of the Effect of Intra-Articular Injection of Autologous Microfragmented Tissue on Proteoglycan Synthesis in Patients with Knee Osteoarthritis”. It's a multicentric project, with the goal to confirm…

December 20, 2019 - Some regions are better organised for wine tourism than others in Croatia - meet the Ludbreg wine road.  Living on a beautiful island of wine on Hvar, as I did for many years, in a picturesque region of Dalmatia whose wines are exported all over the world, I was constantly amazed that there are no official organised wine roads, as this is surely a great opportunity not only for tourism but to develop and promote one of the strongest aspects of life in Dalmatia. Cross the border into neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, and the…

As Morski writes on the 17th of December, 2019, the processing of the steel for New Construction (Novogradnja) 485 has begun today in Split's Brodosplit shipyard on the sheet metal cutting machine. This marks the beginning of the construction of a polar cruise ship contracted for the well known Dutch company Oceanwide Expeditions. ''The first ship is the pride of the shipyard, made during the restructuring and with new software tools. Namely, we're the first in the niche of polar cruisers, in the class ''LR PC6'' we came out with this boat, and it was made on time and in…